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ashspecter · 26 days

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Didn't You Know

@ashesoriley's prompt: A look through Mr. Lancer's eyes as he tries to figure out what's up with the Fenton kid. @underforeversgrace's prompt: Lancer notices something is up with the Fenton kid and intervenes.

Summary: Mr. Lancer is hard on his students because he knows they have great potential. But he also knows when they need a break and a safe place to rest. Daniel Fenton is one of those students.

TW: Blood, Angst, Overthinking

Words: 3578

Read on Ao3!

Casper High School has always been a place where teenagers got off on doing whatever they wished if they thought a teacher couldn’t see them or wouldn’t notice. The halls were always filled with gossip and chatter, but it has never been anything out of the usual. However, the teacher’s lounge has been filled with the curious topic of Daniel Fenton for a while now and Mr. Lancer can’t help wanting to know more.

No one actually talks about it, but everyone seems to know about it. Despite his family’s history (and how they are all thought to be geniuses with more than a few screws loose), Daniel Fenton is by far the most normal of the lot. At least, everyone in Amity Park has always thought so.

Like the other wallflowers, Daniel never really stood out. He has always seemed to hang out in the background, struggle in class, and be pushed around by the A-listers. But, if there’s been anything that Mr. Lancer has noticed it’s that the Fenton boy hasn’t always been like that. Mr. Lancer remembers when he used to be a pretty good student, excelling in almost everything except literature, history, and gym. This is normal for left-brained individuals, Mr. Lancer knew— he has read the studies.

What isn’t normal, however, is for decent students to suddenly start slacking off without warning, a hint, or a tell-tale sign of why. Needless to say, Daniel Fenton’s change in work ethic was a surprise, but it isn’t exactly unheard of in teenagers. There are plenty of students who slack off in school. But Daniel has never been one of them until now.

At first, it seems as though he was just going through the usual absent-minded teenager phase and no one thought much of it. Mr. Lancer certainly didn’t, especially since the change began at the start of the school year. Now, however, it has become apparent that something is distracting the boy. But there has been no clue as to what it might be.

The next thing Mr. Lancer noticed was how the boy seemed socially withdrawn from speaking to anyone and everyone, even his once closest friends. Sure, they were a little strange, but what teenager isn’t? Regardless, he used to get on with plenty of people in the school— talking, chatting, friendly passing smiles or nods, and or helping out with simple things— but now, he hardly speaks or acknowledges a conversion with anything more than a nod. Even stranger, he does not seek his elder sister out anymore and he rarely speaks to any of the school’s staff unless he absolutely has to.

That alone might be why the boy has attracted the attention of the school’s staff. The sudden lack of friendly conversion from a student will certainly raise a brow. Since then, the murmurs about Danny Fenton have become a persistent presence, lingering like a cloud over the school’s usual gossip and chatter. Mr. Lancer is sure that even the students have begun to notice now as well. But that’s neither here nor there.

After the loss of effort and sociability, Mr. Lancer noticed that the Fenton boy would fall asleep in class. And it wasn’t just a one-off experience. The boy fell asleep, face-down in his work nearly every day. Again, not unheard of for teenagers to do, but something very new for the youngest Fenton. It’s worrisome. As an educator, Mr. Lancer can’t help but feel a sense of responsibility toward his students’ well-being, especially when he observes such significant shifts in behavior.

While he would like to talk to the boy, Mr. Lancer is worried that he’d only scare him off. He has been a pretty harsh grader this year with not accepting anything late and not giving half points to partially correct answers so he is very much not a favorite teacher this year. He still cares for his students though. He offers them chances to retake quizzes and to do extra credit work for bonus points. He encourages it. If only more will see it that way.

Nevertheless, the lack of energy in the Fenton boy is perturbing.

Why isn’t he getting the proper rest? Why isn’t he sleeping well? Is something going on at home? He hates that that is where his thoughts have gone. But he seriously hopes that the Fentons don’t partake in cruel and unusual punishments when one of their kids gets into some trouble.

The next thing Mr. Lancer noticed was how stressed the boy always seemed to be— worried about school (despite failing grades), worried about getting in other people’s way, his friends, his family, not living up to expectations, etc. The boy will make himself sick if he hasn’t already!

Lancer can tell the boy cares about what’s going on around him, so it must be hard for him to be trying the best he can and still be failing. But that begs the question: what exactly is happening to Daniel Fenton?

It doesn’t stop at behavioral changes unfortunately.

Lancer has also noticed some physical changes as well. Most, if not all, of them are quite alarming. Random bruises, split knuckles, and little cuts and scrapes are something to be appalled by, but those are, somehow, not the most off-putting things he has seen. Oh, no, Mr. Lancer has noticed something much more disquieting than that.

Glowing green eyes, ghoulish pale skin, and sudden temperature drops have become something both hair-raising and morbidly consistent around the Fenton boy. So much so that he looks like an actual corpse in the hallway on some days.

It’s dreadful.

Mr. Lancer can’t seem to shake off the eerie feeling that something deeply unsettling is unfolding beneath the surface of Casper High School. With each passing day, his concern for Daniel Fenton grows more. Why hasn’t anyone else noticed? Why hasn’t anyone said anything? Why does no one else seem concerned?

As he sits in the teacher’s lounge, sipping his lukewarm coffee, Mr. Lancer finds himself unable to focus on the mundane chatter of his colleagues. He can’t help but feel a gnawing sense of unease creeping over him as he ponders these questions and the changes he has noticed in the boy; it’s the eerie silence surrounding the whole situation. As if everyone is turning a blind eye to the obvious signs of distress emanating from the once-unassuming student.

Lost in his thoughts, Mr. Lancer is startled when the bell signaling the end of the period jolts him back to reality. As the hustle and bustle of students fills the hallway, he catches a glimpse of Daniel Fenton, his expression blank and distant as he weaves through the crowd.

Mr. Lancer knows he can’t ignore his growing concerns any longer. He may not have all the answers, but he owes it to Daniel to reach out, to offer a helping hand in whatever way he can. The boy deserves that much, doesn’t he?

He downs the last of his coffee and rises from his seat. He doesn’t say a word to his coworkers and strides purposefully down the hallway, sensing the weight of his own curiosity pressing upon him like a heavy shroud. The usual hubbub of teenage antics fills the air around him, but their actions are the least of his worries right now. Daniel Fenton needs some immediate help and Mr. Lancer is determined to be just that.

The bell rings, startling the teacher from his thoughts. Instantly, teenagers swarm around him, ready on their way to the classroom. Amidst them, he spies the boy he is looking for, appearing as pensive and drained as ever.

Mr. Lancer knows he can’t ignore his growing concerns any longer. He may not have all the answers, but he owes it to Daniel to reach out and offer a helping hand in whatever way he can. As he watches the boy disappear into the crowd, he decides that he will find a moment either today or tomorrow to speak with the troubled teenager and let him know that he’s not alone— that there is someone who cares.

—

The day offered few chances, unfortunately, leaving Mr. Lancer frustrated for not being able to approach the boy as soon as he wished to. However, it also seemed as though Daniel was more evasive than usual. He would slip through the hallways like a shadow— barely noticeable among the throngs of students bustling from class to class— almost as if he perfected the art of being invisible in plain sight. Did the boy want to be alone? Is he doing this to himself? Surely not!

Determined, Mr. Lancer finally spots his chance as the final bell of the day rings. Students flood from their classrooms, eagerly discussing plans for the evening or the latest school drama. Daniel, however, moves silently towards his locker, completely alone with his shoulder hunched under some unseen weight.

As he approaches the Fenton boy, Mr. Lancer clears his throat to catch his attention.

“Mr. Fenton,” He begins, his tone softer than usual, trying to bridge the gap between authority and empathy.

Daniel looks up, surprise flickering across his features. His guard visibly rises at the sudden interaction.

“I’ve noticed you’ve been having a tough time lately,” Mr. Lancer continues, carefully watching Daniel’s expression. He doesn’t want to scare the boy off while he talks. However, he does notice his eyes dart around as he looks for an escape.

“I’m fine, Mr. Lancer,” He replies taking a deep breath, his voice barely above a whisper. When he notices no easy escape, he turns his head down and stares at his shoes, “Just tired.”

Mr. Lancer nods in understanding “If you ever want or need to talk about something or if there’s anything I can help you with, my door is always open.”

For a moment, there's a flicker of something in Daniel’s eyes— a mix of confusion, gratitude, and perhaps a bit of fear. He nods slowly, murmuring a ‘thanks’ before quickly grabbing his things and heading towards the school’s exit.

Mr. Lancer watches him go, feeling frustrated at himself for not catching him in time. However, it has grown quite clear that Daniel is battling something far beyond normal high school struggles— the physical signs are too disturbing to ignore. The glowing green eyes and other peculiarities point to something unnatural. It’s something that Mr. Lancer can hardly begin to comprehend and no longer ignore.

He turns to reenter his classroom and pauses. There’s the option of reaching out to the Fenton family, but… something in his gut tells him he shouldn’t. What if they are the cause of the boy’s sudden change? But, the Fentons are also known for their eccentricities and involvement in the paranormal, a topic Mr. Lancer finds himself increasingly curious about. And yet, he still can’t shake the feeling that he should just wait and speak to Daniel first and alone.

As he prepares to leave for the day, he ponders when a good time would be to pull Daniel aside the following day. The first thing that comes to mind is the lunch period. Mr. Lancer knows several students leave to go out for lunch, but he also knows that many stay in the cafeteria and that Daniel is one of them.

The man sighs and runs a hand down his face. He hopes that more good than harm will come out of this. He hopes that he can help the Fenton boy, at least a little bit. He fears what might happen to the young teenager if he can’t.

He shudders at the thought and pushes it from his mind. Of Mice and Men! He hopes it never comes to that. He’s heard the stories of others who have. If something like that were to happen to one of his own students, it’d be shocking news.

Shutting the door behind himself, Mr. Lancer begins making his way down the hallway. The fluorescent lights flicker overhead as he navigates the labyrinthine corridors of Casper High School. His footsteps echo faintly against the linoleum floor, a rhythm that matches the cadence of his racing thoughts.

Tomorrow, he resolves, he will find Daniel during lunch period. He will pull him aside, away from the prying eyes and clamor of the cafeteria, and try to get to the bottom of what’s been plaguing the troubled teenager.

But what if it’s too soon? What if he pushes too hard? A sense of foreboding settles over him like a heavy blanket. There is something deeply unsettling about the whole situation— something beyond the realm of normal teenage angst or academic struggles.

He knows that Amity Park has a strange appeal for attracting the paranormal and unnatural, but surely that wouldn’t be the cause for Daniel’s bizarre transformation. Right?

Right?

He should start by doing some research of his own into the Fenton family’s paranormal activities and gather as much information as he can. After all, understanding the boy’s family might be the first step toward helping him.

But the underlying question returns: what if they caused it?

The boy’s sister, as far as he knows, has not tried to reach out either. Usually, the two siblings were tight-knit, but now, they’ve never been further apart. He can’t help but think that something happened between them to tear them apart.

Lost in his contemplation, he barely registers the sound of the school doors swinging open ahead of him. But as he rounds the corner, a sudden commotion jolts him back to reality.

A group of students, those who usually stay after school for extracurricular things, have gathered near the entrance. Their voices are rising in excitement and disbelief for whatever it is their looking at. It piques Mr. Lancer’s curiosity and he quickens his pace and joins the throng of onlookers.

What he sees sends a chill down his spine.

There, hovering just above the ground in the fading light of the setting sun is Daniel Fenton— or rather, someone who resembles him. His hair is snow white and his eyes are ablaze with an eerie green light, casting an otherworldly glow across his pale features. Wisps of ectoplasmic energy swirl around him, dancing in the air like ethereal tendrils.

He doesn’t stay airborne for long, which is strange for a ghost.

Mr. Lancer squints as he studies the figure. Against the sunlight, he notices the figure grip his side and slowly come down to the sidewalk. Something green drips from his unused hand and lands with a small ‘splat.’

It puts the teacher on edge immediately.

“Alright, students! Inside!” He yells, startling a few, “Everyone back inside.”

The students, though initially reluctant and buzzing with a mix of fear and fascination, start herding back into the school with their eyes still glued to the spectacle before them until the school doors shut. Instantly, it all falls quiet. But Mr. Lancer doesn’t move. Instead, he watches the figure, unsure of what to do next.

The resemblance to Daniel is uncanny and yet, this ghostly figure before him is something entirely other. But then he looks up. Their eyes meet. And in that moment, Mr. Lancer knows.

His eyes widen in surprise, but the boy’s grow frantic with a myriad of emotions.

And before he can take a step forward or utter a single word, Daniel turns, and with a burst of green energy, propels himself into the sky and disappears from view with a speed that leaves Mr. Lancer grappling with the reality of what he just witnessed. The lingering scent of ozone and a faint, greenish residue on the sidewalk is the only evidence that the figure was ever there.

Stunned, Mr. Lancer takes a moment to collect his thoughts. The implications of what he’s just seen are vast and unsettling. Daniel Fenton, a boy he’s known for years, involved with the paranormal? No, not just involved— transformed by it.

His mind races with questions, each more alarming than the last. How long has this been going on? How did it happen?

With a hesitant step forward, the man walks right up to where Daniel had stood moments before. The greenish liquid slowly turns mud brown and then red before seeping into the concrete.

Something is definitely up with the Fenton boy.

—

The next day, Mr. Lancer finds himself waiting rather impatiently for the Fenton boy to arrive. He had told himself he would wait until noon, but after the events of last afternoon, something needs to happen much sooner than that.

His thoughts are a whirlwind as he stands in the near-empty hallway with his eyes glued to the entrance. He’s aware of the weight of his responsibility, not just as a teacher but as an adult who’s just had his eyes opened to a reality he can hardly comprehend. The revelation that a seemingly average high school student could be entangled in something as extraordinary as the paranormal is disheartening even though the man has lived in Amity Park his whole life.

The morning drags on, each tick of the clock both a reminder of the urgency of the situation and a testament to Mr. Lancer’s growing apprehension. He finds himself questioning how to even begin addressing what he saw. How does one confront a teenager about being… what? A ghost? A supernatural entity? The very thought seems ludicrous, yet the evidence is irrefutable.

As students start trickling in, Mr. Lancer’s focus sharpens. He searches for the distinctive figure of Daniel Fenton among them. He sees students laughing, some rushing, others lost in their own thoughts, but no sign of Daniel. The bell rings, signaling the start of the first period, and with it, Mr. Lancer’s concern deepens. It is unlike the boy to be late, especially given the circumstances. However, with whatever happened yesterday, there must be a reason.

Just as he’s about to move on and return to his classroom, he sees him— Daniel— looking more worn and haggard than ever. The boy’s shoulders are slumped as if carrying the weight of the world and his eyes have dark circles under them, telling of his lack of sleep. The sight genuinely hurts Mr. Lancer.

Their eyes meet, and Mr. Lancer can see the flicker of recognition, followed swiftly by a guarded wariness. It’s clear that Daniel knows something has changed, that Mr. Lancer has pieced something he wasn’t supposed to.

Without a word, Mr. Lancer gestures for Daniel to follow him, and to his surprise, Daniel complies. They walk in silence towards the his classroom, the noise of the bustling school fading as they enter the quiet, empty space.

“Mr. Fenton,” Mr. Lancer starts, closing the door and turning to face the small teenager. He pauses briefly and sighs, “I want you to know that… I know.”

The boy shifts uncomfortably, but doesn’t say anything.

So he continues, “What I saw yesterday… I— I want you to know that I… I know, Mr. Fenton.”

The boy sag deeply at his confession, bowing his head to shield his face with his fringe.

What does he do? Mr. Lancer freezes. What does he do?

Without much thought, he steps forward and places a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Immediately, he sobs, sucking in a breath so suddenly that he chokes.

“You’re not alone,” The elder man says gently, “You are not alone.”

With that, the floodgates open. And the boy begins to speak, haltingly at first, then with increasing urgency. He speaks of ghosts, of battles fought in the shadows of Amity Park, of a burden he carries alone.

Mr. Lancer listens, astounded and heartbroken in equal measure. The story Daniel tells is fantastical, yet the evidence is undeniable. The boy before him is not just a student; he’s a hero, fighting battles most people couldn’t even imagine.

As the tale unwinds, Mr. Lancer realizes the depth of Daniel’s isolation. The Fenton family, far from being the cause of Daniel’s troubles, is deeply involved in the paranormal themselves, each in their own way struggling to protect their town, their family, and Daniel himself.

The bell rings, signaling the end of the period, but neither of them moves. For Mr. Lancer, the world has shifted. The realization that he has a student— a minor— risking his life on a regular basis is overwhelming. Yet, there’s also a profound sense of duty that settles over him. He cannot turn away from this, from Daniel.

“Mr. Fenton,” He says finally, “You’re not alone in this. Not anymore. Whenever you need me, I am here. Whenever you need help with an assignment— or an extension— you’ll get it. You have my word.”

The gratitude in the boy’s eyes is enough to make a grown man cry. Mr. Lancer almost does, but he holds it back for the sake of remaining strong before Daniel. For the first time since he learned of Daniel’s secret, Mr. Lancer feels a flicker of hope himself. It won’t be easy, and the road ahead is uncertain, but they’ll face it. Together.

As they leave the classroom to join the throngs of students in the hallway, Mr. Lancer knows that his life has indeed changed forever. But for the first time, he feels ready to face whatever comes next. Now armed with the knowledge that sometimes the most extraordinary heroes are the ones walking right beside him, unseen and hurting just as much as the next.

#danny phantom #danny fenton #mr lancer #good teacher #good teachers #identity reveal #dp au #no one knows au #phic phight 24 #phic phight 2024 #dp events #phandom #phandom events #oneshot #long post

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mossycobblestonewrites · 13 days

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DC X DP PROMPT #16

Mr. Lancer is the brother of Lex Luthor. He never really had an eye for business, or invention, or innovation. He just wanted to be a teacher, spread the good word on literature. Which is the whole reason he had changed his name and moved to the middle of nowhere.

He does not appreciate his brother delivering a package in his door. Not delivering it personally, not even sending a physical person to do a drop off. Just a measly note.

'hold onto this for me - L.L.'

What has Lex ever done for him? Nothing, that's what. So Mr. Lancer does the sensible thing. He opens the box to investigate to find - hardened ectoplasm?

Mr. Lancer knows about Danny and co. Au where Kryptonite is just hardened Ecto and is basically rock candy. Lex sends his brother a shit ton of kryptonite for safe keeping thinking 'he lives in the middle of nowhere what's he gonna do with it?' he feeds it to Danny :)

#dc x dp #dpxdc #lex luthor and mr. lancer are brother #mr. lancer changed his name #lex sends him kryptonite for safe keepings #mr. lancer feeds it to danny lmao #tasty treat #he does not know that the glowing green stuff is kryptonite but he also doesnt ask where lex is getting all the candy hes giving to danny #dont look a gifthorse in the mouth and all that #what happens when lex comes to collect?#a beatdown #obviously #thats dannys stash now #up to you if its lancer or danny doing the beating though

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satoshy12 · 5 months

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Professor Fenton of Gotham University.

Cutest Dani with Papa Professor/Teacher Danny, who is teaching history at Gotham University. (As he can just meet historical people in the ghost zone.) +

After the years did go by, Danny was able to do better with his enemies; he was a teacher! Ghost Writer and Clockworks fault + small but of Mr. Lancer, and in the Zone he was able to meet historical figures pretty easily. + That was how Danny became the youngest professor in the US with his master's thesis in history.

And then he became a professor in Gotham; his students weren't sure how to feel about a teacher their age or younger. But ironically, he was the best teacher they ever had at the university! So people had no problem.

And Danny showing off his baby girl, Dani, is fun for him too! Hey, the job makes sure his daughter Dani can go to the university for free in the future. And his students really like Dani! + Adult Danny and Ellie Look i had before me. (Manhwa:" male lead's little lion daughter)

And Cassandra Cain was a pretty good person who spent time with Dani. When she visits the University for Tim, she found Dani.. And kind of forgot she wanted to visit Tim. + Wayne Manor Tim:" I fear my professor will become my brother-in-law." +Extra+ Archaeologists:" I dreamed and worked my whole life to find a book handwritten by Shakespeare!" Professor! Danny: " I have like 3 of them and gave 1 to my teacher for an A+ in history and English for the rest of the year. Man, Mr. Lancer did cry for like 2 weeks after that."

+ And to the Archaeologist's horror, it's really an original one. They found Mr. Lancer of Amity Park, who proudly showed them the book. So many historians and Archaeologist don't leave Danny alone; they know he has a lot of things like that but no idea where he hides them!

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azulhood · 5 months

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Danny and Jazz were almost at the end of their rope.

They've checked almost everyone they knew who would take them in.

Sam's family? Didn't want them living under the same roof as their daughter.

Mr Lancer? He did actually want to take them in but his one bedroom apartment was not a suitable place for kids to live and his teachers salary couldn't afford to support three people.

Tucker's family? Got shut down by Vlad.

Which was the end of the list of who could get custody, well living at least.

There was no way either of them were living with Vlad, and with that in mind, they decided to get creative.

--------------------

When Edward woke up, sitting at an old interrogation table in what seemed to be an abandoned warehouse (don't ask him which one, gothem had too many) and splitting pain in his head from most likely getting knocked out, his first thought was I knew it.

Gotham rogues had been disappearing only to reappear the next day with no memory and often in bad shape, like black mask and Bane.

Some of the rogues, such as penguin and Ivy, believed that they would be safe from the next attack.

Edward was slightly more pessimistic.

And it turned out he was right.

"ahem." Noise brought his attention to the warehouses other occupants.

Two teenagers.

It was strange to think that these two put Bane into a coma, but Edward had spent most of his nights getting the stuffing beaten out of him by a child wearing the colours of a traffic light so he was suitably wary.

"How can I help you?" Being polite was always a good idea when kidnapped by possible meta children (because no normal person could walk away from a fight with Bane, the bats don't qualify as normal.)

"Hi, I'm Jazz and this is Danny." The red head introduced herself and the blue eyed boy next to her. "Nice to meet you Mr Nygma."

"Nice to meet you as well." His mouth responded on autopilot as he panicked over being addressed by name, no one who kidnapped him did that ( which was mostly the bats taking him back to Arkham after another foiled plan) unless they were Amanda Waller.

"Right, now that we all know each other, let's get started." Danny said pulling out a sheet of paper and star themed pen from somewhere.

"Get started on what?" Torture? Edward would really like to know if that was the case.

"The interview." Jazz explained " You just have to answer a few questions then you get to go, after we wipe your memory of course, we have someone who we don't want knowing we're in Gotham."

"Oh, of course." Edward replied faintly as he processed the information given to him.

"And if you get job we'll contact you in a week." Danny added as he twirled his pen. "Got it?"

"Yes." Edward had never been more confused in his life.

#dpxdc #dcxdp #dp x dc #dc x dp #if you can't get your own responsible adult then store bought is fine #everyone in Gotham is confused #the bats have no idea whose kidnapping villains and why #Jazz and Danny just want someone they can trust as their guardian #do they care if that someone is a villain? no #anyone is better then Vlad #does Red Hood count as a rougue?#if so he gets an interview too

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nerdpoe · 1 year

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fucking shit here's another one

danny is heir apparent to the realms, and while he cannot be summoned as he has not been crowned yet, he can still receive gifts.

bear with me

as he is heir apparent, his will is mirrored by the infinite realms. so in the middle of English class, as he's staring at Mr. Lancer, his deep, resonating thought is

"Fuck man I don't get any of this, I need like, a really good English tutor."

meanwhile, in the batcave, constantine goes fucking rigid and stares at Red Hood, who he just knows that the High King wants for some reason or the other.

"Hood, were you aware that the High King of the Infinite Realms wants you handed to him on a silver platter?"

"What."

meanwhile all over the world English professors and teachers and straight A students are going missing and turning up in Amity of all places.

cultists are confused because like, normally the King of Death wants cheeseburgers and frenchfries, but now it wants people? weird but alright, they'll send over people they guess.

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yourlocalcorviddad · 6 months

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Ok Ok so.

In dpxdc stories. Danny always gets assumed to be sick or uses it as an excuse or whatever to hide his powers right?

What if he wasn't lying?

It wasn't something easily noticed, not when half a dozen other things could explain it after all.

The shakes lingering? Well he'd used his ice powers a lot the night before fighting Skulker.

The faint feeling and lightheadedness? Well his mom had a good shot when people didn't interfere, and while he healed fast, it wasn't from nothing; he felt better after he ate anyway.

Heart racing suddenly? Probably just attempting to regulate the low beat on reflex again to seem normal but over shot it.

But the getting out of breath or spotty vision hadn't really been easily explained.

It was Mr. Lancer who asked about it after he'd gotten up from his seat in detention-happening less and less for actual reasons and more an opportunity to safely do his work and rest, after the truce with the ghosts to leave him and the town be during certain hours-only for the next thing he knew he was on the floor, head pillowed on Mr. Lancer's sweater, and a cool wet paper towel on his forehead and neck.

POTS. Post orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. Not uncommon for those who had had injuries too their hearts to get.

It made sense when the teacher asked if he could have it. Apparently a friend of his's daughter had it.

From there, it made things easier to an extent. Salt was pretty easy to add, he figured out a wrist brace that he could extend into a cane if needed to.

In ghost form he didn't need it at all, but human form had its limits.

Despite all that he'd gone through, he graduates and even gets accepted to a college near jazz, hers was in Metropolis but Gotham had the ambient ectoplasm that he needed, and it was a day trip away.

And so Gotham U became his home, especially after his parents couldn't take that he wasn't "their son" anymore when he told them-after moving everything and getting his cheap apartment set up just in case. He considered it lucky that they loved their son enough they couldn't hunt "his ghost".

Last he'd heard they were working closer with the GIW but hadn't had much luck since the portal strangely closed soon after he left and the other ghosts didn't feel much reason to visit Amity anymore without him there.

It was Gotham U where he met Dick by literally fainting into his arms after a long day where he'd forgotten to eat and the early dinner the night before plus the going down the stairs at a quick pace and leaning forward with gravity.

"sorry, couldn't help falling for you~" the cheesy pick up line was the only thing his foggy brain could comprehend before he fainted.

#dpxdc #me giving Danny my own conditions cause i can?#more likely than you think!#but it can cause a lot of the same issues he has from being half ghost. heart rate can be really slow sometimes #bp can be really low heck I've read as dead on machines before lol #and other stuff #in phantom form it doesn't actually go away #it just gets healed fast enough that he doesn't notice #he deserves a bit of a break in it I'm not heartless #death defying

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faeriekit · 27 days

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Things Long Gone

for a phic phight prompt from @armed-with-knitting-needles

Edward Lancer woke up the same way he did every morning.

He rolled out of bed. Brushed his teeth. Changed into a button-up and a tie, and slacks he wouldn’t hate throughout the course of the day.

He made his coffee like he did every day: he stuck his thermos under the machine, waited with a slice of toast until the coffee maker stopped pouring, and capped it in one smooth motion that shook its contents until everything was relatively mixed inside. No sweetners. No sugar. No milk.

Great. Ed went to grab his keys…

…His keys weren’t on the hook.

He blinked, hand frozen in its attempt so reach what wasn’t there. His. Where were his keys? He’d had them yesterday.

…He was pretty sure he’d had them yesterday. Hadn’t he gone to see Lizzy and the new baby? His sister had been so excited to show Charlotte off to her new uncle. Ed had been excited to go.

…Whatever. Amity Park was relatively walkable; as long as he dashed, he could get there in time.

So, off he jogged, into the hot, early morning, sweating and puffing as he went.

Ed made to the school entrance just as the bell rang for first period. He sighed, struggling for air—but at least he’d be able to swap in for Mrs. Keppler’s math course this morning. Man, he felt as if he’d run every class at this point. They might as well make him the—

Something invisible SLAMMED into his face.

His nose crunched. Ed swore in every classic title he knew, stumbling back and grabbing at his nose—ugh, and his fingers were coming away wet. He had to go see the nurse, or, more likely, the hospital. He was later than ever, but he’d have to—

He tried for the door again. Again, something stopped him.

…Ed frowned. He rapped against the invisible boundary with his knuckles. It was probably ghosts, again, but this was unusually…static. Benign?

“Ed, good heavens! What happened to your face?”

Ed turned around, nose slowly beginning to swell up in his hands as Ms. Cathleen Rylant stalked up the walkway to the school. “G’Morning,” he grunted, unable to summon the capacity for proper pronunciation. “I…seem to be blocked from getting into the building.”

Cathleen frowned. Her shoulder bag was pulled higher onto her thin, elderly shoulder: a nervous gesture. “I’m sorry to hear that, Ed! Is there anything…”

“Do you mind testing it for me?” Ed tried, carefully cupping the blood he could feel from dripping down onto his dress shirt. “If it affects you, or is unique to me…”

There were a few ghosts that targeted individuals. Ed had some surety that the genie ghost had gotten him to ‘call out from school’ today—there was a text today, and he would not put it past

“Got it,” the elderly science teacher offered sweetly. Cathleen was a gift, truly. “Was it…?”

Ed smacked a hand against the barrier. There was no visible sign of it—no distortion, no ripple, no change in color.

“Got it.” Cathleen—and her much more fragile bones—carefully put a hand out, expecting to be able to put her weight on it.

She just barely caught her balance before falling onto the concrete step. Ed reached out a hand to help her, and, of course, ended up with bruised fingers for the trouble. He swore.

“Huh,” she said. “…Well, I’m late for first period anyway; want me to tell Yuuko what’s holding you up?”

Ed sighed. He reminded himself that informing their principal would be best, considering the circumstances… “Yes, please. Thank you, Cathleen.”

“No problem, Ed.”

And Edward Lancer sat on the front step of the school, back leaned against nothing, and waited to see what could be done for him.

He took his hand away from his nose to reach for his coffee.

…His blood wasn’t red.

Ed’s blood went cold.

Wait. Why had—

—Screeching tires, metal SLAMMED into its final place, snapping, cracking, the lights cutting out, a choked last breath—

…Ed’d had his car yesterday. Why didn’t he have it this morning?

“I’m imagining things,” Ed muttered to himself. He wiped the green blood onto the back of his clean plants and resolved to wait for Principal Ishiyama.

Mr. Lancer was still outside the school by the time lunch rolled around.

“So he’s just…hanging out?” Sam asked around a mouthful of vegan-and-cruelty-free sushi, staring from their place under the tree at their teacher and his crowd of educational professionals.

Danny shrugged. He swallowed a bite of ham-and-baloney. “Looks like,” he observed. They watched as Mr. Lancer proved, again, that no matter how hard his middle-age-professional bulk heaved and pushed, there was no getting past the entryway into the school.

“…Huh.” Sam took a second bite. Across the yard, Mr. Lancer slipped on the invisible barrier, and everyone got closer to help pick him off the ground. “Any idea why this is happening?”

Danny put his sandwich down. He didn’t say anything.

Sam turned to look at him. “Danny?”

“…I saw an accident on the way home with Dad last night,” Danny offered quietly. He picked a little speck of nothing off of his sandwich. “The two cars were bent in half at the bottom of the ravine. There were rescue trucks and police all over the other side of the highway; cars were backed up for like four exits behind it. One of the cars looked like Mr. Lancer’s gray crapbox, but it’s not like I could get a good look…”

Sam went quiet. Danny stayed quiet.

They watched as Mr. Lancer explained, again, for the nineteenth time, that he couldn’t get into the school, and didn’t know why.

“…Oh,” said Sam. She set her chopsticks down.

“Mmhmm.” Danny swallowed. “Uh…looks like Mom’s updates on the ghost shields are working, though.”

“No kidding,” Sam echoed absently.

Eventually, lunch was over. When they went back inside, half-eaten lunches packed back up to take home for later, the distant figure of Mr. Lancer was still outside the school door, hoping to be let back in.

#phic phight #phic phight 2024 #danny phantom #car accident #tw death #i mean it is Danny Phantom. but also #faer fic #is there a better tag for this??#phicphight2024

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tourettesdog · 1 year

Text

Okay

Based on the prompts "Lancer is a good teacher and cares" and "Well, shit. He can't change back!"

For @majorastudios and @lexosaurus Word count: 9,563 Warnings: panic attacks, child neglect (more implied) AO3 Link ~

Danny would be the first to admit that he had a knack for finding himself in stupid situations.

Or, at least, they had a knack for finding him.

This was all to say that the last place Danny expected to find himself on a bright and sunny July afternoon was trapped in an elevator with Mr. Lancer, of all people.

Now, the situation could have been worse— and it was. For all the shitty luck that Danny possessed in the universe, it seemed that there was always another giant middle finger waiting around the next corner.

Danny hadn’t thought much when he heard the grinding sound of the parking deck’s elevator as one of the mechanisms securing the cable snapped. He’d been out flying when it happened and simply bolted towards the sound, determined to phase whoever was inside to safety. It had come as a shock, finding the elevator occupied by someone he knew. What came as more of a surprise, however, was the sickly glow of a ghost shield snapping into place before Danny could follow through with that plan.

It had been a close thing, putting on the brakes before he collided, Lancer in tow, with the glowing wall of the elevator.

Unfortunately, the doors had long-since shut and he couldn’t touch the crooked metal without meeting the painful shock of the shield.

Just being inside of it had Danny feeling woozy.

All he could do was stand awkwardly on the elevator floor, his stance a bit crooked as the elevator had sagged into a tilt, off-balance as it was in the shaft.

It was at least preferable to the thing crashing down to the ground floor.

Lancer, for what it was worth, was managing better than most would given the circumstances. At least, he had stopped screaming about a minute ago.

If there was one positive thing Danny could gleen from the experience, it would have to be hearing his teacher utter a hearty ‘fuck’ rather than the usual literary substitute.

Not that he had much time to enjoy it at present.

Lancer’s chest heaved and his knees shook. He leaned against the side of the elevator with his arms splayed out across the metal hand railing on that side, his eyes flickering all around the small cabin. Danny knew that ghost shields never felt pleasant even to humans, but in his distress Mr. Lancer seemed to favor leaning into the buzz of the ectoplasmic energy over standing. Granted, given the shakiness of his legs, they might not hold him much anyway.

The metal of the elevator groaned, dust cascading from the paneled roof as it slid a couple inches down the shaft, eliciting a startled yelp from Lancer as he grabbed the railing with white knuckles.

Danny supposed there was more than one reason he should stay anchored to that railing.

“H–hey,” Danny said, trying to get his teacher’s attention. He wasn’t exactly sure what to say, but he didn’t think that awkwardly standing there, staring the man down, was conducive to settling his nerves.

Mr. Lancer’s gaze snapped up to meet his own. His eyes stretched wide, as if he hadn’t noticed Phantom’s presence until that moment, even though the ghost boy had just scooped him up before unceremoniously dropping him back down when the shield burst to life.

“Ph-Phantom?” he quavered.

“Yeah, um, who else?” Danny said, the words leaving his lips before he could think better of it. He cringed as soon as they did, chastising himself. It probably wasn’t a good time to make sarcastic jibes.

If Mr. Lancer noticed the snark, however, he didn’t comment on it. The toes of his shoes dug into the dirty linoleum on the elevator floor and he licked his lips nervously, eyes still darting around the cabin as though an exit might materialize from the ectoshield.

When he didn’t say anything, Danny felt like he needed to fill the silence. Anything to drown out the low hum of the ectoshield and the rapid hammer of Mr. Lancer’s frightened heartbeat.

“So, I know this looks bad but everything is going to be okay,” Danny said. His voice echoed in the small space, the tinny sound amplified by the metal around him.

Lancer just blinked, his pale green eyes, so much duller than Phantom’s own, stretched as wide as saucers.

“H–how can you be sure?” he said.

Danny’s eyes trailed around the elevator, ghosting over the green glare of the ectoshield. It completely covered the elevator box, though the floor of the shield had been thankfully recessed beneath the linoleum.

Danny could still feel the hum it gave off through his boots.

“I’ll think of something,” he said, more to himself.

Mr. Lancer blanched, his face practically as pale as Danny’s hair. “Can’t you just—” the words died on his tongue as he glanced at the green shield once more, shivering slightly.

“Yeah, the shield kind of complicates things,” Danny said with a sigh. “Not their best design choice.”

He didn’t have to elaborate on whose design choice had crafted this coffin disguised as a convenient mode of transportation.

Lancer let out a shaky breath. “It probably seemed more practical in theory,” he said, each word as shaky as his legs.

Danny nodded, crossing his arms. “Like, I can see what they were going for, but you’d think after over a year of help from a ghost they’d consider maybe— just maybe — that trapping people in a small ghost shield suspended three stories up might not be a great idea.”

“Oh, Watership Down,” Lancer said faintly, sliding slightly down the wall, leaning more heavily against the railing. Danny hadn’t realized just how much he was rambling, or how faint Lancer was looking in the wake of his ill-timed tirade.

“Sorry,” Danny said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Probably not the best time for that.”

Lancer nodded, his eyes wide and staring at the floor. “Yes, I don’t think it is,” he said.

Danny let out a long, drawn out sigh. He ran a hand through his mop of white hair, trying and failing to focus his thoughts on anything constructive. He was uncomfortably aware of the small, tight space. Nothing quite as claustrophobic as the thermos, but without any sure way to escape it had Danny’s core thrumming uncomfortably.

Lancer just stared at him. Danny couldn’t fault the man. For all that Mr. Lancer had seen of Phantom— considering the many times he had rocketed through his classroom wall— Danny supposed that this was probably his first time seeing Phantom up close. Danny could see his own glow reflected in his teacher’s eyes— or perhaps it was mostly the light that the ghost shield emitted.

“I don’t suppose you have a phone on you?” Danny asked him.

Considering Mr. Lancer hadn’t reached to grab one, he thought he already knew the answer…

Sure enough, Lancer replied with a hollow, “Left it in the car.”

Danny tried to strain his ears for any outside sounds, desperate to drag his focus off of the small confines of the elevator. He could hear the rumble of traffic, but not much else besides that. The concrete walls of the parking garage were too dense, and the buzz of the ghost shield too distracting.

“Looks like we might have to wait for someone then,”Danny said nervously, his eyes trailing to the buttons on the elevator.

Moving slowly, careful not to startle Mr. Lancer, Danny crossed the short distance to those buttons. He was closer than Lancer was and his footsteps much lighter. The man tensed slightly as Danny moved, but didn’t say anything.

A layer of the ghost shield danced over the buttons, a rippling wall of green that sparked with electricity. It had to be one of his parents’ newer shields, judging by the bright color and the intensity of the static it gave off. Just being near the thing had his own ectoplasm buzzing uncomfortably.

Danny glanced back at Lancer, finding his teacher’s eyes trained on him. There was fear there, though also a quiet curiosity. It reminded Danny that he hadn’t seen Mr. Lancer at his parents' last few ghost seminars. That, for all the nervous fear mongering his teacher had given into in those first few months after the portal sparked to life, he seemed… much more reserved now. He didn’t show the same open support for Phantom that his students did, but Danny would take reserved caution over open hostility any day.

Glancing back at the elevator buttons, Danny bit his lip. He couldn’t exactly ask Lancer to press the buttons himself. Even if he carried him, there was no saying if the elevator would shift again once he placed him back down.

Steeling his nerves, Danny held out his finger for the emergency button on the control panel.

The ghost shield rejected his ectoplasm immediately, sending a current of electricity through his body in a painful jolt. Sparks shot out where his finger met the shield, and Danny could only watch in horror as those sparks tangled with the control panel itself. He could see the current race through the metal, rippling beneath the buttons in bright cracks and pops.

One last spark ignited at the top and, with a loud crack, the lights of the elevator shut off.

Danny stumbled backwards as it happened, hardly stopping himself from careening into the opposite wall of the shield. In the absence of the elevator’s lights, the space was bathed in a sickly wash of green.

Lancer swore again, the sound enough to have Danny spinning around to make sure he was okay. Lancer had crouched, both hands still held firmly onto the railing as he lowered himself to the elevator floor with shaking knees. At a glance, Danny could have mistaken him for a ghost with how the light of the ectoshield painted his skin.

“Are you okay?” Danny asked, his voice sounding rather small, shaky with his building unease.

He doubted that the elevator had put off much of a distress signal before it lit up like a Christmas tree.

Lancer just slowly shook his head, staring at something only he could see. He was practically sitting now, his hands shaking on the railing, barely able to hold on any longer. Thankfully, the elevator didn’t shift as he sank to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Danny said, glancing back at the elevator buttons. A thin line of smoke trailed from the emergency button, giving off an acrid scent that mixed with the ozone of the shield.

Lancer looked up at that, the sudden movement in his periphery causing Danny to snap his attention back to him. Danny was surprised to find his brows furrowed.

“What are you sorry for?” Lancer croaked out.

Danny blinked. He stared. He looked between the buttons and Lancer, now shaking his own head. “I… broke the buttons?” he said, confused.

Surely Lancer hadn’t missed that lightshow.

Lancer’s brows drew so close together they nearly formed one line. His frown stretched almost as far, pulling at his black facial hair.

“You just hurt yourself trying to press it,” he said slowly.

Danny nodded his head, still unsure. “Yeah… and I broke it?”

If Lancer’s hands weren’t currently clutching onto the railing for dear life, Danny had a feeling they would find their way to pinch at his tear ducts— a gesture he often adopted when faced with a frustrating situation or student.

“You… you knew the shield would hurt you and still tried to press that button,” Lancer said, his voice now tinged with exasperation.

Danny’s own brows drew together, frustration drawing his teeth to clench. “ And I said I was sorry,” he challenged.

It wasn’t his fault there was a ghost shield. It wasn’t his fault it tampered with the buttons. He’d tried , and if Lancer couldn’t accept his apology, Danny wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do.

It’s not like he could storm off right now. Even if he could transform back, he had no way of knowing where the elevator was within the shaft, or how easily he could escape it without unsettling the delicate balance.

Not that he could transform. Not here, not now.

Something strange ghosted across Lancer’s face, the expression hollow and haunted, shadowed oddly by the light from the shield; it glowed so brightly off of his bald head.

“I know you didn’t mean to,” he said, his words hushed, echoing slightly in the enclosed space. “I’m not arguing with you, Phantom, I… Are you all right?”

The question came so out of left field it struck Danny dumb. He fidgeted uncomfortably, noticing for the first time that he was cradling his left hand in his right.

Glancing down, Danny saw that his glove had been singed by the contact with the ghost shield. Just like the buttons, it smoked faintly, revealing angry green flesh beneath.

He was shaking. When did he start shaking?

Clenching his hand into a fist, Danny thrust it behind his back and out of sight. “I’m fine,” he said, locking his eyes onto Lancer, as if challenging him to say otherwise.

That strange expression persisted on his teacher’s face. If Danny had to give it a name, he supposed the closest thing he could compare it to was pity. Something about that squeezed uncomfortably at his core.

Danny was used to breaking things, and he was even more used to being blamed for breaking things— whether he had a part in it or not. That button had been a lifeline, possibly the only real thing that could ensure Lancer a safe reunion with the ground…

Why wasn’t he angry?

An uncomfortable silence filled the elevator. Danny could hear a siren somewhere outside, though it sounded far too distant to be something headed their way. Danny had no way of knowing how long it would take for help to arrive, or if it even would in time.

Danny was still shaking. It had gotten worse, if anything. The glow of the ghost shield was too bright and the walls of the elevator too narrow. The tilt in the floor too drastic, the hum of the shield resonating too discordantly with his core.

Danny had crouched down too, though he couldn’t say when he sank to the floor. He hugged at his knees, suddenly very aware of the summer heat. The elevator had been stifling to begin with, devoid of fresh air and baked by the sun. The ghost shield didn’t help, putting off a crackling heat that seemed to sap the breath from his lungs. Breath he didn’t need but wanted.

When did his breathing get so heavy, anyway? “Phantom?” The voice was quiet, unsure. It sounded both miles away and entirely too close, whispering in his ear.

Danny stared at his gloves. The shield painted them green, like fresh ectoplasm over his hands. His arm still stung from the shock— still buzzed with the latent energy it gave off.

A distant echo of something far worse that still clung to him, leaving fern-like marks that rippled up that same arm.

“Phantom?”

He was Phantom, wasn’t he? That was his name, but he didn’t feel much like anything right now. More smoke and mirror than boy or even ghost. Phantom was supposed to be a hero, not some child who sank to his knees with fear squeezing tight enough at his chest to burst.

“Phantom, are you okay?” Was he okay? What did it mean to be okay? When was the last time he really was okay?

Somewhere distant Danny knew he was spiraling. He could practically feel his own awareness slipping through his fingers, lost to that tidal wave of fear.

“Breathe with me, okay?”

He didn’t need to breathe, but he still did— sucking down deep gulps of air, like some awful mockery of a fish gasping on the bank of a sun-baked river.

“In and out. Breathe with me, it’s okay.”

How many times had Jazz said those exact same words? They were practically ingrained in Danny’s psyche, as much a part of him as the hazmat suit had made itself, fused as it was to his ectoplasm.

“That’s it. In and out.”

When had he shut his eyes? For all the green staining his eyelids, they might as well still be open.

“You’re doing great. Just keep breathing.”

An odd thing to say to a ghost (not that Lancer knew the half of that), but not unappreciated. Air felt good, as humid and musty as it was. His core followed the pattern, practically imitating the humble tattoo of a heart.

He could hear a heartbeat too. Faster than his own, though slower and more timely than the pulse of a core. Human. Safe.

Danny focused on the sound. It almost drowned out the hum around him. It almost was enough to lull him into a safe, comfortable rest.

Almost, but not quite. Not enough to completely dash the ever-present buzz of the shield beneath him, dragging Danny back to the coffin of an elevator and its lurid green light.

Slowly, Danny opened his eyes. The light of the shield was not particularly bright, but it still burned his retinas. The hum seemed louder now, the static of it buzzing against his skin and frayed nerves. He blinked owlishly, his eyes roving over the rippling walls of green—

They landed on the person sitting nearby.

Danny couldn’t help but flinch back, surprised by the close proximity. With how glued Lancer had been to the railing, he would not have expected the man to move, and yet…

Here he sat in the middle of the elevator in front of him.

"Feeling better?" Lancer asked. He leaned away slightly from Danny, but did not make any retreat.

For a moment Danny wondered if he'd transformed. Why else would Lancer have risked shifting the elevator just to, what, comfort him?

Danny held up his hands, half-expecting to find human skin.

His eyes met the same pair of green-stained white gloves.

"That was quite the panic attack," Lancer said when Danny didn't answer.

Panic attack… that was definitely the phrase for it. Danny could recognize the lingering fatigue and oversensitive nerves that followed one.

That spiraling sense of losing himself still lingered too, along with tears rolling down his cheeks.

"Sorry," was all Danny could think to say, wiping at his face.

"Why are you apologizing?"

It seemed like a genuine enough question, not that Danny felt he could give a genuine enough answer.

"Dunno," he said, hugging his knees more tightly, rubbing his good hand over the other. "Just seems like a pretty inconvenient time and place for a panic attack."

Of all the places he’d had a panic attack, this one maybe ranked a four out of ten. If he was being generous.

Lancer sighed. He settled down a bit beside him, though did not at all relax. Danny could see how his fingertips dug into the linoleum like cat claws desperately trying to find purchase on a branch.

“I don’t know that there’s ever a convenient time or place for them,” he mused.

Danny rolled his eyes. “I shouldn’t be having one in the first place,” he muttered darkly.

Lancer’s brow quirked at that. “What makes you say that?” he asked.

Danny picked his head up off of his arms, glaring at the man. “I came here to save you, not to, what— have an impromptu therapy session? Whatever this is.” He gestured around the cabin of the elevator, as if this whatever was some physical concept he could point to.

“Well, we’re not going anywhere anytime soon, I think,” the teacher said. He didn’t look at Danny directly, his eyes trailing over the shut doors of the elevator. “Why not humor me?”

“I don’t feel like any jokes right now,” Danny quipped, pillowing his chin back on his arms.

Lancer chuckled, the sound odd and out of place in Danny’s ears. “No, I don’t suppose you would— frankly, I don’t either, but… humor me. Why don’t you feel like you can have a panic attack?”

Danny wasn’t sure when the script had flipped on him. It hadn’t been that long ago when Lancer was clinging to the railing, shouting in fear while Danny tried to weigh his options.

Now, sat on the grimy linoleum floor of the elevator, Lancer seemed remarkably calm and Danny… he felt remarkably small.

Smaller than usual.

He stubbornly wiped at his face again, hoping that no evidence of tears remained. Lancer might not know it was him, but he still didn’t want to be seen crying in front of his teacher.

“I’m supposed to be a hero— and a ghost. Why should I have a panic attack over something like this?” he asked petulantly, digging his nails into his knees.

Lancer did not reply right away. He was quiet, seeming to pick his words very carefully before opening his mouth once more.

“Well, what is bothering you? Was it the shock from the shield?”

Danny’s eyes roved from Lancer to the buttons almost absently. He couldn’t tell if the shock was still reverberating through his ectoplasm, or if it was the mere memory now. The phantom feeling of the tide tugging at your waist while falling asleep after a day spent in the waves.

“I don’t… I don’t think so— I don’t know,” Danny stammered, his brows bunching together with frustration as he considered it.

The glare of the ectoshield taunted him, rippling around him like light refracting through the water of a large aquarium.

“Is it something else?” Lancer asked gently.

Danny didn’t look at him. He stared at the buttons, transfixed. If he looked at them just the right way, they sort of formed an odd face with too many eyes. It reminded Danny of a ghost he saw once while lost in the zone, drifting a little too far past the Far Frozen’s snowy mountains.

“Maybe,” he said quietly. “It’s part of it, I guess, but… I mean the shield sucks, and it’s small in here and reminds me of the thermos, and it’s too hot for my core and—”

Danny stopped abruptly, his eyes locking onto Lancer’s, finding the man watching him with wide, fascinated eyes. It had his core stuttering uncomfortably and a blush rising to his cheeks, no doubt as green as the hazy light from the shield.

Ducking his head down into his knees, Danny muttered, “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.”

Another sigh from Lancer. He was doing that a lot today— he always did, really. “It sounds like you needed someone to talk to,” he mused.

Danny just shrugged, refusing to meet his eyes. His face positively burned. “I have friends,” he mumbled.

“Are they who you usually talk to about these sort of things?”

Danny clamped his eyes shut tight, trying to calm the unsteady thrum of his core. “I guess,” he said dismissively.

A pause stretched between them and Lancer shuffled uncomfortably in it. Danny tensed as he did, worried the elevator might shift again, but it seemed as though it had found a solid place to rest in the shaft.

“Do you…” Lancer trailed off, sounding very unsure of the question lying on his tongue.

When he didn’t continue, Danny cracked open one bright green eye. “Do I what?” he challenged, tensing himself for whatever question might follow.

The look Lancer gave him would not be out of place on someone who had just watched a sad commercial with sat wet dogs. “Do you… have any adults to talk to? Any ghosts that look after you?”

Whatever question Danny had been expecting, he hadn’t expected one to strike so surely at his core. It thrummed like the strings of a violin, magnified until it reverberated through his entire being. Danny wondered if Lancer might feel it through the floor, over the hum of the shield.

“What?” was all he could say. No other words would find their way to his lips. His mind had shut down, lingering on the question with an uneasy, empty feeling that resonated from his core and hollowed out his belly.

“Is there anyone that looks after you?” Lancer asked again, his tone firm but no less gentle for it.

Danny stared straight ahead, seeing nothing as he let the question turn in his mind. His first thought was of Jazz. Ever since she found out about him, she’d stepped up in ways he could not have hoped for or imagined. She kept the first aid kit stocked. She checked him over for injuries. Jazz asked Danny how he was feeling, and wouldn’t always let him get away with a dismissive answer.

She’d even started to cook them breakfast these last few weeks. Her first few attempts were about as disastrous as their mother’s own cooking— no doubt unaided by the tainted ingredients— but she was getting better. She had a little fridge in her room now with ingredients kept far away from the lab samples, and for the first time in a long while Danny was remembering what eggs tasted like without the acidic bite of ectoplasm.

Danny opened his mouth to give Lancer an affirmative answer, but froze when the man’s first question rang in his ears.

“Do you… have any adults to talk to?”

A stone dropped into Danny’s belly as he realized with a sick sense of dread just how much Jazz had risen to the forefront of his mind as a caretaker, completely eclipsing their parents.

Danny’s mouth was dry as he swallowed a lump in his throat. He could feel Lancer’s eyes burning into him as he took far too long to answer— his silence about as much of an answer as anything else, really.

“Y–yes,” Danny said, though his shaky words hardly convinced himself.

They certainly didn’t seem to convince Lancer, either. His brow quirked slightly before he schooled his features into a softer expression. “Do you?” he pressed.

Danny nodded, even as his mind spiraled once more, wallowing through a current of memories. He tried to think of the last time he felt comfortable talking to his parents, but only flashes of uncomfortable silences and nervous lies came to mind. He tried to think of the last time he felt safe in their care, but only the memory of dodging weapons and hiding injuries swam to the forefront of that current.

At some point Danny’s nod turned into a tilt— a shake. He was shaking his head, ever so slightly. His core squeezed and fresh tears pricked at the corners of his eyes.

Lancer sighed yet again, the sound bone-weary and deep with exhaustion. “Where do you go when you’re not in Amity?” he asked. “Where do you stay?”

It was too personal of a question, one that Danny never would have thought to answer from a civilian. He’d been asked so many things by the people of Amity— shouted questions of his death and of his life before then. Each grated at his nerves and his core with an unrivaled discomfort, never something he would think to acknowledge with more than a joke, at most.

Yet… Danny didn’t resent the question coming from Lancer. It didn’t upset him, not in the way it normally did. The discomfort was there, but it had more to do with his own uncertain answer than the fact that Lancer had dared to ask the question in the first place.

It was Danny’s turn to sigh now, feeling his entire body sag into the motion as he hugged his knees still tighter, practically phasing them into his torso.

All he could do was shrug.

He knew where Danny Fenton went at night, but Phantom didn’t exactly have a place to rest his head.

Lancer shuffled a bit closer until he was sitting directly beside Danny. He didn’t scoot away, almost welcoming his presence.

“I won’t pretend to know what it’s like being in your shoes,” Lancer began, his eyes locked onto Danny as he spoke, “but I’m here to talk if you ever need someone to be there.”

Danny blinked, staring. He hardly knew what to say— could hardly find any words in his head. After a pause, all that would come out was a hesitant, “Yeah?”

Lancer smiled, the gesture small as it tugged at his lips. “Yes. I’m a teacher and part of my job is to be there for my students.”

Danny frowned at the word. “I’m not one of your students, though,” he said defensively, shuffling his feet. “I’m just a ghost.”

For one gut-wrenching moment Danny wondered if Lancer had figured him out. He couldn’t imagine how. His ghost form changed too much, both impacted by the ectoplasm in his system and by his own thoughts, as Frostbite once explained to him. The sharpened ears, the greenish tint of his skin— the broader shoulders and squared chin, more masculine than he dared hope for.

Even just the glow was enough to throw his features into a differing relief, but above it all there was one factor that Danny knew kept his identity safe:

The difference between flesh and ectoplasm. Life and death. Why ever assume something that breathed would also harbor something as innate to death as a core?

(Nevermind that he had been breathing this entire time, not that he needed it as he was.)

Yet if Lancer noticed the breathing or somehow made that leap of logic that saddled the line between life and death as surely as Danny did himself, he didn’t show it. He simply smiled sadly, meeting Phantom’s eyes with a kindness he rarely had shown to him in this form.

“Maybe not, but you must have been a student in this town at some point,” he said, his eyes trailing to his hands in his lap, fingers nervously rubbing his knuckles. “I might not be an expert on ghosts, but after teaching for as long as I have, I’d like to think that I know a thing or two about teenagers. You stay in this town enough that it must have been your home— that it must still be.”

He wasn’t wrong, of course. Mr. Lancer didn’t know the details, but his words rang truer than he knew. They echoed in Danny’s mind, as hollow and uncomfortable as they were right.

Amity was Phantom’s home. It was his home.

Just hearing someone who wasn’t Sam, Tucker, or Jazz acknowledge that had the tears pricking at Danny’s eyes spilling over.

A hand tentatively patted his shoulder and Danny leaned into the touch, finding more peace in it than he thought he should.

A peace that, like many good things, did not last very long.

A familiar siren cut through the concrete, the sound grating at Danny’s frayed nerves with a fresh onslaught of fear. He couldn’t help but jolt at the sound, jumping into the air where he hovered, staring at the elevator doors.

“Phantom?” Lancer asked nervously.

The siren practically echoed in his skull, the sound far too familiar and far too disquieting. How many times had he heard it barreling towards a ghost attack, knowing that its presence would only complicate the battle? How many times had he been glad for the warning, if only so he could escape?

There was no escape right now, however. No way for him to slip out of sight, either through the walls of the elevator or into his own human skin. He couldn’t transform, not with Lancer right next to him and his secret already hanging by a gnawed thread.

Mr. Lancer must have heard the siren himself now, judging by the way his eyes moved from Phantom to the elevator doors. Danny couldn’t help but notice that his eyes brightened with relief.

“Lord of the Flies, it sounds like someone’s finally coming,” he said, that same relief carried on a much more relaxed sigh.

Danny bit his lip, unable to answer. He didn’t resent Mr. Lancer’s joy at hearing the siren, though it did come as a dark contrast to his own roiling emotions.

“I don’t think they’re here to help,” he mumbled darkly, unable to suppress the resentment in his tone as he glared at the ectoshield warping over the elevator doors. “Not met at least.”

Danny heard Lancer suck in a sharp breath of air. He turned at the sound, finding his teacher watching him with renewed concern in his eyes. “They wouldn’t…” he said slowly, his own words trailing off as doubt crept into his tone.

Danny nodded. “They must’ve gotten some sort of alert when this thing went off,” he said, gesturing to the shield.

“But they wouldn’t… you’re not…” Lancer tried again, his words no less convinced the second time around as he trailed off, his eyes widening when they fixed on the door.

The siren was so close now, echoing around the elevator. Each blaring note of the sound had Danny’s ears ringing and his core stuttering violently with fear. He absently drifted farther away from the elevator doors, watching them warily.

“If I could just explain to them—”

This time Lancer’s words were cut off as a loud, booming voice shouted. It came from somewhere overhead, echoing down the elevator shaft.

“Is there anyone in there!” the unmistakable voice of Jack Fenton boomed. “Our sensors detected that a ghost triggered our shield. Is the ghost subdued? Are any humans trapped?”

Danny stared, wide-eyed up at the elevator ceiling. He sank back down onto the floor, cowering as he heard what sounded like metal grinding as someone tried to force it apart.

His eyes flickered to Lancer, watching uncertainly as the man gaped at the ceiling. He had to be frighteningly aware of his precarious position in the elevator. Jack Fenton’s voice, though it sent fear rocketing through Danny’s core, must’ve sounded like freedom and safety to Lancer in that moment.

And yet… his eyes trailed back to Danny with uncertainty.

It was disquieting, seeing that expression on that face of a man trapped in an elevator shaft, who for all intents and purposes should have welcomed any offer of rescue with the widest embrace.

Yet Danny thought back to Lancer’s words as he calmed him down from his panic attack. He thought of his hand gently patting Danny’s shoulder, soothing him as he cried. He thought of how Lancer, once he pushed his own fear aside, had shown nothing but kindness and fear for him, not of.

He had called Phantom his student. Had called Amity his home.

“Is anyone down there!” Jack Fenton called again, the sound of metal shifting accompanying his voice once more.

In that moment, Danny knew that he would have one of two options. There was no way his parents would disable the ectoshield without first making sure that no ghosts lingered invisibly within it. As Phantom, he was trapped, resigned to being seen. Cornered.

If his parents caught Phantom now in this position, Danny’s only option would be to try and explain himself and hope that they might understand. Pray that they wouldn’t assume he was overshadowed and give him a fraction of a chance.

But… Danny had another option.

Looking at Lancer, finding him nervously staring up at the ceiling, Danny weighed that second option.

He weighed Lancer’s words, the kind admissions of home and student nestling comfortably in his core.

It was a leap of faith, and one Danny probably shouldn’t feel more secure in than his parents, and yet… When was the last time he felt safe around an adult?

Here, in an elevator, trapped with a man who had shown him more humanity in the last five minutes than an entire town had in a year.

The choice was clear to Danny.

“Mr. Lancer,” Danny began, his voice timorous and too small. His teacher’s eyes locked onto him at the sound.

“Y–yes?” he asked just as quietly, bewildered.

Of course, he had never given Phantom his name.

Danny licked his lips. His breath caught in his throat as the metal shifted overhead again and he had to shut his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply to steady his nerves.

“I am one of your students.”

When the man didn’t reply, Danny slowly opened his eyes, finding Lancer shaking his head, his eyes never once leaving Danny.

“I… don’t follow,” he said.

More metal shifting overhead. Something heavy thumped. Danny’s core pulsed and his hands shook.

“I—I am one of your students,” he repeated, hardly more than a whisper. “Y–you taught me last year, and I wasn’t the best student but… but you helped me— then and now. And I… I’m afraid, but I want to trust you.”

The words tumbled out, a flood breaking through the dam as more tears slipped down Danny’s cheeks. He could hear talking above now, though the words were lost to the hum around him and the awful buzz still dancing through his ectoplasm.

Lancer was breathing heavily now. He looked at Phantom as though seeing him for the first time, his eyes stretching wide as saucers, capturing enough of the green light around them that they almost mimicked his own.

“D–Danny?” he said in a hushed tone.

The last bit of stone that held that flood back shattered. Tears dripped down Danny’s chin and he nodded, every inch of him shaking at that mere admittance.

He hardly even had to reach for his core. The transformation came to him too quickly, rolling over him in a warm rush that banished the chilliest parts of his core to rest within his chest. He watched the gloves disappear, the bright green scars over his hand fading to white. The lichtenberg figures were faint, though now he could properly see their winding course over his wrist and under the hem of his red sweatshirt. White as they were, the sickly glow of the shield stained the scars just as green as his gloves had been.

“Danny…” Lancer said again, the sound choked in his throat.

Danny hardly dared glance up, terrified of what he might find on his teacher’s face. Disgust? Disappointment? Fear?

He half expected Lancer to call a warning to his parents.

Danny looked up when the elevator groaned, startled as he felt it shift slightly and heard an alarmed sound from overhead.

Lancer was looking at him still, but it wasn’t with any of the fear that Danny had expected. It was tired— sad. Sorrow. The man had shifted slightly where he sat, trying to reach out for him, but had frozen when the elevator shifted. Now he simply sat there, watching Danny with that somber expression.

Danny couldn’t tell if it was just the green light, but he thought he saw the pinprick of tears in his teacher’s eyes.

Dust rained down as something overhead shifted. For the first time since the buttons sparked, light that wasn’t green flooded the elevator as one of the ceiling tiles moved.

Maddie Fenton’s red-lensed goggles swam into view. Danny hated that his first instinct at seeing them was to cower, fear coursing through him at seeing those lenses reflecting the green of the ghost shield.

But if Maddie knew something of Danny’s secret, it didn’t carry into the surprised gasp she gave as her eyes locked onto him.

“Danny! I— what are you doing here? How did—” the words caught in her throat and she gave a minute shake of her head, seeming to come back to where they were.

“Mads?” Danny heard his father’s voice from behind her, echoing in the expanse of the elevator shaft.

Danny hardly heard them as Maddie explained the situation to her husband. He hardly noticed when more of the panels were pulled away and a rope ladder was lowered into the elevator.

When Lancer urged him to climb up it first, he had to tell Danny twice before a fraction of the words made it to his ears. He moved mechanically, his legs shaking as the elevator groaned when he tentatively stood and clutched the ropes.

He paused for a moment when he met the roof of the ectoshield. Even in their rescue, his parents hadn’t deigned to disable the device, though he was sure they could. Danny’s core buzzed uncomfortably as he passed through the wall of green, but it allowed his passage without the sparking jolt that had bit at his hand.

When Jack pulled Danny up with enough force to almost yank his arm from the socket, he allowed himself to be pulled into a tight embrace. He melted into it for a moment before his father had to shift his focus to Lancer, still trapped as he was in the elevator shaft.

Danny could only wait with bated breath as they pulled him up.

He watched as Lancer stumbled out onto the floor of the parking garage, blinking dazedly in the sunlight that filtered through the open windows.

How strange that it was still daylight.

Danny waited, still feeling sure that he had made a mistake— that any moment now Lancer would speak up and spill the truth.

Those thoughts fled his mind when Mr. Lancer’s eyes locked onto him. There really were tears there, welling onto his lashes, brightening the green of his eyes with emotion.

He didn’t speak, just watching quietly.

With both of them secured, Maddie pulled Danny into a hug of her own. She held him tight, asking if he was hurt and smiling proudly at him when he put on a brave face and told her he was fine.

A fraction of that smile even felt real, basking in his mother’s warmth and concern.

It died a little when she said, “We need to scope the area for whichever ghost triggered the shield. If a ghost is willing to tamper with these cables, there’s no telling what other sort of harm they might cause.”

She whipped around to Lancer, the man straightening as her eyes fell on him. For all her short stature, Maddie could be an intimidating, intense ball of fire.

“Did you see anything? Did you hear anything that might help us locate this ghost?” she asked him.

Mr. Lancer blanched, his mouth opening and closing— eyes skirting minutely to Danny as he failed to give her a proper answer.

After a moment, he simply shook his head. Danny felt some of the tension leaving his shoulders, though he still didn’t dare let himself fully relax.

Maddie frowned, disappointment clear in her own slackened shoulders as she sighed. She glanced between her husband and Danny, her expression softening slightly as it landed on him, before fixing her lavender eyes once more on Lancer.

“I hate to ask this of you, William, but would you be willing to take Danny home? I know that you two have been through a lot this evening, but we can’t let this go uninvestigated. If there’s a dangerous ghost lurking in the area, we need to find it before it truly hurts someone.”

Her tone was so sincere, each of her words dripping with resolve.

Lancer just gaped at her, looking between mother and son with utter disbelief.

“I—” he paused, glancing at Danny, looking at him with the same intensity he had before calling his name in that elevator shaft. “Yes.”

Maddie positively beamed, relief and admiration evident in her tone as she said, “Thank you so much; you have no idea how much this means to us.”

Mr. Lancer just nodded stiffly, standing to the side as Maddie pulled Danny into one last hug and kissed his forehead.

His skin burned where her lips touched. His chest felt hollowed out, his core thrumming slightly.

Something colder than the core in his chest ghosted over Danny’s skin when she let him go, turning back towards the elevator shaft to join the investigation with her husband.

Danny stared after them for a long moment, watching as she fell into the task without so much as a glance backwards.

He wiped at his forehead, still feeling the burn of her touch.

Another sigh behind him, longer and deeper than any Danny had heard that evening. He turned to find Lancer standing there awkwardly, wringing his hands with a nervous energy that he rarely saw adults let show.

“Let’s… let’s go then, shall we?” he said quietly.

Danny sighed too. He resisted the urge to glance back at the elevator shaft, already knowing that his parents were too absorbed in their work to notice.

For all the deep fear he’d felt at their arrival, this hollow ache was deeper.

“Y–yeah,” Danny said, swallowing against the tightness of his throat. “Okay.”

Danny didn’t even know why Lancer was in the parking deck that day, and he didn’t necessarily want to ask. The thought of inconveniencing the man from an errand he needed to run would just be one too many awful weights on his shoulders today. Instead, he just followed his teacher to his beat-up silver car, quietly climbing into the passenger seat.

Lancer climbed in on the driver side just as quietly. He didn’t even buckle his seatbelt at first. Didn’t start the car. He simply stared through the windshield, his knuckles whitening on the steering wheel as he sat there and breathed.

Danny picked at the hem of his sweatshirt, lost for words. He couldn’t help but notice the phone lying beside him on the console between the seats.

“Are you alright?” Mr. Lancer asked him. His voice didn’t echo in the car like it had in the elevator, but he still flinched at the sudden sound.

Slowly, nervously, Danny met his eyes again, peering at the man through his bangs. “I guess.”

Lancer’s face crumpled slightly, pinched with sadness, but he nodded. Without saying another word, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys. The car roared into life a moment later, and a moment after they were off.

As they rounded the spiral of the parking garage, Danny found his eyes trailing out the window, locking onto the open doors of the elevator shaft. He could see the bright orange of his father’s hazmat suit, though couldn’t spot his mother before the car rounded the turn, leaving them behind.

Danny’s core squeezed alongside his heart.

Lancer turned the radio up, seemingly needing something to fill the silence, but lowered it just as quickly when the broadcast that filtered through the radio mentioned ghosts within the first breath of the speaker.

They continued on in awkward silence, Danny’s eyes glued to the window but unseeing anything past it.

“They don’t know, I assume.”

Danny had hoped that Mr. Lancer might not acknowledge the ghostly elephant in the room, but he supposed, like with all things, he was never that lucky.

Danny didn't bother to look at the man, choosing instead to just stiffly nod his head.

Another sigh. One too many, enough to grate at Danny’s nerves, but not enough for him to snap at it.

His belly felt too hollowed out for that anger now.

“You… you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” Lancer then said, carefully picking around the words like someone navigating a minefield. “You don’t have to tell me anything, really.”

“I know,” Danny said, allowing some bite to enter his words. He needed some measure of control over this situation in which he had practically none to speak of.

In his periphery, Danny could see Lancer nod his own head as he said, “I meant what I said back in the elevator— to Phantom. To you.”

That was enough to make Danny turn his head. He wasn’t sure what street they were on, only that it was a long one with too many stop lights. They’d stopped at each along the way, agonizingly dragging out the drive.

“Meant what?”

As they stopped at another light, Lancer turned his head to look at Danny. His eyes still seemed bright with emotion, though what tears had gathered in his eyes had disappeared.

“That if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m here. You are my student, after all.”

Danny bit his lip. He searched Lancer’s eyes, trying to find any hint of a lie or deceit, but Mr. Lancer truly seemed as sincere now as he had been stuck in that elevator shaft.

“It… doesn’t bother you that I’m a ghost?” he asked him.

There had to be a catch— there had to be a limit to this kindness and Danny would rather find it now than later.

Mr. Lancer’s frown deepened at the word ‘ghost’, but it quirked up into a small smile just as quickly.

“And my student,” he repeated gently. “And a kid, just like any one of my other students.”

Lancer’s smile was wry, hardly there, but it warmed him to see it at all. His voice echoed in Danny’s head as they drove on, the silence feeling much less daunting with those kind words occupying his thoughts.

Lancer seemed to hesitate for a moment before they turned onto Danny’s street. He hesitated another moment before pulling the car up alongside the sidewalk.

His knuckles were bone-white on the steering wheel, every inch of his posture as tense as Danny’s felt, like a cord ready to snap.

Danny didn’t get out of the car at first. He just sat there, staring at the red brick building of FentonWorks and the glaring neon signs over the door. His eyes skirted up to the Ops Center, the shadow looming over him a fiendish thing.

Danny was glad when Lancer did not immediately oust him from the car. He needed that moment to just sit and breathe. To have a space, however fragile, where he felt like he might have someone in his corner who was older than sixteen.

“You would… you really wouldn’t tell my parents?” Danny asked, hardly daring to speak the words allowed. Terrified that he might get confirmation of his worst fears.

Lancer’s eyes widened. He slowly shook his head, mouth slightly slack-jawed.

“No,” he said a little too quickly. “No, not…” He actually did pinch his tear ducts this time, in that familiar gesture he hadn’t been able to back in the elevator. “Pride and Prejudice, Danny, I know when a student is afraid of their parents. I’ve… I’ve seen it before. Not like this, never like this, but still…”

He trailed off, looking ahead, swallowing a lump in his throat as he gathered more of his thoughts.

“Danny…” he began again, the word quavering. “I don’t know how to help you with this. I… I just need you to promise me that you’ll do your best to be safe. That you’ll do the smart thing and ask for help when you need it. That if your parents hurt you…”

He trailed off again, shaking his head. Danny’s parents had already hurt him, they both knew this. It wasn’t an if, it was a when and an again.

“I’ll be careful,” Danny tried to reassure him. “I–I have Jazz, and Sam, and Tucker. They know. They know and they help me, and I trust them.”

He hoped that those words might quell some of Mr. Lancer’s doubts, but Danny’s core thrummed uneasily when his teacher’s eyes just widened with renewed horror.

The man slowly shook his head, a trembling hand rubbing at the bags beneath his eyes.

“You’re all just kids,” he said quietly.

It was true, technically, but Danny hadn’t felt like much of one over the last few months. He had too many responsibilities as Phantom— had seen and faced too many things.

“We can handle it,” he said, trying to reassure himself as much as Mr. Lancer.

He wasn’t sure it worked either way.

Danny glanced back to FentonWorks, his hand tracing the handle of the car door. “Um, thank you for taking me home, Mr. Lancer,” he said, his throat still tight. “And, uh, for everything else.”

Mr. Lancer just nodded. He seemed so tired, the bags beneath his eyes deeper and darker than Danny’s own. His teacher said nothing as he opened the door and climbed out, though seemed to find his voice as Danny went to shut it.

“Wait—” he said suddenly, holding out his hand.

Reluctantly, Danny pulled the door open wider, leaning down to hear what he had to say.

Mr. Lancer studied him for a long moment, eyes flickering over his face as though searching for a hint of Phantom’s glow in his irises.

“My door is always open if you need someone to talk to,” he said evenly. “Whatever happens, that doesn’t change.”

Danny blinked, letting his words sink in. He could feel the sincerity in them and, after everything that had happened today, Danny felt he had very little reason to doubt his teacher.

Nodding, voice still hoarse with emotion, Danny said, “Okay.”

~*~

William did not drive off right away. He allowed his car to idle as he watched Danny Fenton walk up the sidewalk and the steps to his front door. The boy knocked, waiting for a response inside. There was a long pause in which nothing seemed to happen and William was just considering rolling down the window to call out to the boy when he glanced back at him.

William’s heart leapt into his throat as Danny’s eyes met his. Even from a distance, he could see a sharp hint of green in them, the same shade he had grown accustomed to in his time trapped in that elevator. He watched with bated breath as Danny’s gaze lingered on him for a long moment before sweeping up and down the street.

William’s hands tightened on the steering wheel when Danny turned around and stepped through his front door as if it simply wasn’t there.

William let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, a shaky exhale that hardly did the stress of the day any justice.

With one last glance at FentonWorks, finding a simple wooden door where Danny had stood just a moment before, William drove away.

~*~

William stood in the entrance to his apartment for a long moment. Just stood there, hardly acknowledging when his cat came to greet him, brushing up against his ankles with a friendly meow.

He stiffly bent to stroke a hand through his fur, the soft texture feeling stiff and coarse against his numb skin.

Moving mechanically, William shuffled through the kitchen as he set a kettle on the stove to boil. He wasn't even sure how long the kettle whistled before it was enough to shake him from the stupor of staring into open space.

Even once he had his cup of tea, Lancer couldn't stop shaking. He sank down into his favorite armchair by his favorite shelf of books, eyeing the light brown tea in his cup without drinking.

He thought of Danny all the while— of Phantom. Of how long the ghost boy has been in Amity Park and what that must mean for his student.

It had been a year ago, William recalled clearly. A year ago when all of the ghosts appeared— Phantom included.

That must have been when…

A drop fell into William's cup of tea. He watched the ripples as more tears rolled down his cheeks.

His hand shook violently, splashes of the tea spilling into his lap, and William had to set the cup down on the end table beside his chair.

A year. His student had been dead for a year and he hadn't even noticed.

His parents hadn’t, either.

William didn't even want to think what had caused it. Didn't want to imagine what horrors that boy had faced, because he could already picture, far too clearly, plenty of them.

How many times had he watched Phantom fight?

All of the absences, all of the behavioral issues. Everything fell into place, a gruesome puzzle that William had never known needed solved.

He thought, too, of the boy's parents.

How many times had he watched the Fentons shoot at Phantom, aiming their guns without so much as a moment's hesitation?

William hardly noticed when his cat approached, giving a small meow as he butted his head into his hand and slowly picked his way into his lap. When Radio began to purr, the feeling that rumbled through his body was achingly similar to what William had felt from Phantom when he broke down.

When Danny, his student, broke down.

If Radio minded the tears splashing into his fur, he didn't care to move. He simply stuck there, rumbling away in William's lap, heedless of the emotions choking his chest.

William didn't know how long he sat there, mindlessly running his hand through Radio's ginger fur, allowing the cat’s purring to still the last few trembles in his fingers.

William didn't know what he'd do when the summer ended and he had to face that boy every day, knowing just why he raced from his classroom.

All William knew was that he'd keep his cellphone on him this time, always ready to answer just in case that boy needed his help.

If anyone needed that kindness, it was him.

#Danny phantom #phic phight 2023 #phic phight #phanfic #fanfic #dp fanfic #dogfics #lexosaurus #majorastudios

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tanglepelt · 10 months

Text

Dc x dp idea 84

Jack and Maddie are legit crazy mad scientist.

They moved to amity before jazz was born. Prior to the justice league. Those who didn’t comply when the moved were swiftly taken care of.

All outside new sources come from them amity has only seen what the fentons want.

The Giw were hired by the Fentons. Both are bad. But who would the town rather deal with the shoot first supposed government. Or the wacky Fenton parents.

And how many parents can exactly actively stake out a school. How many times had they been inside the school during the school day.

That is until mr lancer comes into play. Somehow he managed to slip by and entered the town this year. Earning a position of vice principal right under their noses.

He actively promotes Danny doing better. Actually forcing him to do his work and learn.

He takes notes of Danny’s declining health. Falling asleep in class, the bruises and reports the fentons. Only for nothing to happen.

Lancer then takes notes of the eccentric actions of the fentons. The screaming of tearing the ghosts apart. He knows about the truth of the outside world. He knows this would go against the meta human protection acts. So he makes a mental note to contact the proper services of the need arises.

After the events of the town being yoinked into the infinite realms. He finally acts. Sending out an email and call to the justice league hotline. Unbeknownst to him both being stopped by the Fenton parents.

Obviously they plan to deal with him when the time is right.

The only reason he stays is because no other adult seems to care about the kids. He was the only one who event attempted to check in on them during the ghost flu.

He can’t stand by any longer when he sees the two Fenton parents hunting phantom. See them getting skilled shots in. Actively forcing phantom into Danny. But they don’t stop. Still shooting at Danny.

Mr. Lancer watches as Jazz, Sam and Tucker manage to get them away. He ushers them to his car the five hardly manages to make it out. Danny seriously injured.

It’s only then does the phone connect to the justice league helpline.

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darthfrodophantom · 7 months

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A Secret Uncovered - Chapter 25 - Final Chapter

Summary: When a reporter catches Danny's transformation on tape, Danny finds that dealing with his new notoriety is the greatest battle of all. While facing the media, his classmates, Valerie, Dash, his teachers, and his family, he wonders if they will see him as he is, or if they will only see him as a ghost. But who is the mysterious ghost who set him up? What plans does he have for Danny now that his secret has been revealed? And how much can he possibly mess up his life further?

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49436419/chapters/127133692#workskin

FFN: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2760973/25/A-Secret-Uncovered

Yes, this is a NEW final chapter of A Secret Uncovered!

As promised, the final chapter is here! After 10 years since my last update and after 17 years of originally posting it, this chapter is finally seeing the light of day.

This is such a huge moment for me to be able to share this with you. I hope you all enjoy it. I hope it's everything you wanted it to be. And thank you for sharing your time with me while reading this fic!

#danny phantom #danny phantom fanfiction #fanfiction #a secret uncovered #identity reveal #the ending #i did it #my pride and joy #everybody finds out danny's secret #good parents jack and maddie #good teacher mr. lancer #best sister jazz fenton

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yetanothergreyjedi · 1 year

Text

Ghosts of Our Pasts: Part 7

DPxDC Crossover

Danny Fenton and Damian Wayne Sibling AU

Masterpost Previous Next

Part 7

"I saw you!"

"Good morning, Wes."

"What were you doing with Bruce Wayne?"

"...nothing?"

"I know he's Batman. And I saw you on the roof!"

"Whoa! Fentoina met Batman? Where you swapping super hero secrets? Did the Butts match?" Dash interjected, not believing a word Wes said.

Danny rolled his eyes as hard as he could, threw a few extra sausages on his plate and went to sit down.

"I think Wes is dreaming of me," Danny informed them.

"Oh no," Sam said, oh so helpfully.

Tucker stared down at his breakfast plate containing various meats. "Uh, creepy? "

"Maybe it's more like astrial projection, he was definitely asleep when I left, and when I got back, but he knew what I was doing."

"Oh, no."

"Sam!"

"You realize he probably already had abilities, and we just didn't notice because Amity Park?" She pointed out.

"Well, I'm realizing. It's the worst thing that's ever happened to me."

"Can we not trauma dump over breakfast?"

---

Edward Lancer had assumed that the lack of 'I'm technically an adult so's were because his students understood the dangers of Gotham. He was wrong, they had simply been waiting for the most effective moment to utterly crumble his argument. That was how one group was split into 4, one for each chaperone.

His group had been in a former supervillain's lair (and it was a lair, even Edward knew what a lair felt like.) for hours. Technically rehabilitated, sure, Edward wasn't going to judge the doctor for past actions, but he wasn't going to feel safe until he left the gardens either.

Ms. Manson didn't seem to mind as she regarded the next plant in the line. She would consider it for a few moments, say some things to the friends that trailed behind her and either move on, or have a one-sided? conversation with it. Tucker and Daniel had their hands clasped behind their backs like young children, they had not touched anything since arriving at the garden. Wes was regarding them all suspiciously, but seemed to be growing tired. The rest of the group had left when another Casper High group arrived, finished the garden tour in a normal hour, and had decided to go somewhere else.

Edward was not suprised when Dr. Pamela Isley strolled purposefully down the aisle, directly to where Samantha stood. Lancer missed whatever the two women had said to each other in his rush to get closer.

"Nah, I fall closer to winter than anything. The Green tends to take offense to my existence." Mr. Fenton told the Doctor. She nodded agreeably and looked to Mr. Foley.

"Same as him but with Tech. I've never tried doing something with plants and I don't plan too."

She looked to Edward, he froze.

"He's just a teacher." Said Ms. Manson, and the lair's owner turned her attention away from him. He it would probably feel offensive if he didn't feel so relieved.

---

Damian should not have his phone on him; he was in class. His phone buzzed, and Damian was glad he'd chosen to ignore the rule.

Dany had sent a picture, a selfie. In it he was clearly trying not to laugh as Condiment King rampages in the background.

Dany: do I do something? With a little thyme I'm sure I can mustard something up.

Damian almost double checked that a sibling hadn't rearaged his contacts, but the selfie proved this was all Dany... who was facing Condiment King as a civilian...

He did not have time to alert Signal before the next text was received.

Dany:kszkksskmssbsh

Damian: Dany?! Do you require medical assistance?!

Dany: I'm good lmao

Dany: the man sauced Lancer

Dany: one sec

-Dany sent a video-

Damian raised his hand, asking to be excused. Far too much time passed before he reached a place he could watch it in peace. He could not be interrupted if he was to coordinate a plan of action. He pressed play.

The Condiment King sat shamefaced in a restaurant seat as Dany's teacher lectured him on life choices. It was hard to hear exactly what was being said over the snickers from his classmates. The video panned over the briefly before ending. Wait... was that... ?!

Damian: Dany...

Dany: I spell it with 2 n's

Damian: Danny...

Dany: yes?

Damian: that is Poison Ivy at your table...

Dany: She took us out for lunch :D!

---

This guy was an idiot, Dash thought. He and Kwan had cut through an alley, and now this guy was trying to rob them; at knife point! Them! Two burly football players from Amity Park, and this guy was trying to rob them with this little 4 inch knife!

"Uh, no thanks," Kwan said in disbelief.

"I said hand over your—"

Dash tilted his head, "Buddy, the Box Ghost is more threatening than this,"

"I'm pretty sure the box knife is sharper too," Kwan added. "We need to be on the other side of this alley, so if you could do this later?"

The man sputtered and aimed at Kwan, taking the polite dismissal like fighting words. Kwan rolled his eyes, sidestepping, and Dash snatched the knife out of his hand.

They kept walking, continuing the discussion on how football would be different in college.

The man didn't try to stop them again.

---

Lester: Great news!

Mikey: ?

Lester: My greatest fear is no longer failing the STAs!

Mikey: makes sense, since we already took it. Mikey: What made you realize?

Lester: Oh, some guy with a bag on his head gassed the street.

Mikey: that's why my parents said I couldn't go.

Lester: Fright's sword was worse to be honest, Our group is heading back to the hotel to sleep it off.

Mikey: How's that?

Lester: Not the first time I've been in a vehicle with shadow monsters.

Lester: Did you see they're making a Doom the Movie?

---

"I disarmed it,"

"You disarmed it," the officer repeated

"Yeah," the young woman sounded more like she was saying 'duh' . "Wasn't even that complicated! I didn't even need Star's help."

"It was a lame bomb." The blond, Star, agreed.

"Super lame! Everyone always makes Gotham out to be soooo dangerous, but a toddler could dismantle this!" The Latina woman kicked some electrical components with a high heeled foot. "Let's get out of here, find some place interesting!"

---

* group chat created *

Danny: A group chat with 47 people, delightful

Dick (this is his name lol): It's not that bad...

Tim: sibling groupchat

Danny: Cool, can I add my sisters?

* multiple people are typing *

Only 2 of 4 chaperones still have adequate knowledge of where their group has split off to. Lancer because he is hypervigulant and half his group went joined another group.

Group 2's chaperone because they got gassed and decided it was a good day for a midday nap and their students agreed.

Everyone else is in the wind and will show up at dinner.

STA stands for school testing acronym, I'm so creative!

@shyrebeldonutpickle *bonks you on the head with my creep stick* no threatening in my replies!

Tag List

(I will add this to Ao3 when I have my computer again, it will be a while)

(some of you will be added to a reblog, if you are tagged please do not request to be tagged again it's confusing me)

@spectralstardustandphantomnights @avelnfear @idfk-man10 @blackroserelina @candeartist422 @mur-ururu @luer-mirin @insufferablecatenthusiast @skulld3mort-1fan @alonedustspeck @voidbornposts @meira-3919 @marshmello @aethernorwood @mimilikey @undead-essence @cloudminder @markus209 @everything163 @latheevening226 @roman4517 @moobloomrights @battybatbat @lumosfeather18581 @werv @ahyesanerd @pyramaniac @lexdamo @princessbelix @bun-fish @deeannthepan @edgyboi10000 @thatrandomsarahchick @busterkeel @aconitewolfsbane @spoopyspoony @bright-shade @spidey29phangirl @idontgetpaidenoughforthisshit @keimiwolf @u-a-wizard-jamie @gay-puff @bicerise @itshype @blackfoxsposts @icanneverdecide @lolottes @chubbypotato @jovialherringtacoghost @saltyladynightmare

#dp x dc crossover #dp x dc #amity park #gotham #grey writes

547 notes · View notes

lavendarlily · 4 months

Note

3 pitch pearl

cw: panic attack

3. cold hands in warm hands | pitch pearl

The Honors English 3 class shuffled into their first period, the students bundled up from the chilled December air. Wet shoes squeaked against the linoleum after braving snow and ice outside. The air was thick with tension and exhaustion as the junior class was just barely surviving their final exams before their holiday break.

Danny found his way to his seat, hoping, praying for the best. This was an important semester after all - college applications were just around the corner. He had to do well or risk his chances at getting into a decent university. Sure, he’d gotten by decently with his higher-than-average intelligence (it was a Fenton thing), but this year’s courses had been rough. If he didn’t pull out of this class with at least a B…

He took a deep breath, and tried to calm the butterflies in his stomach, ignore the ache in his head, and steady his shaking hands. The first part of the English exam was multiple choice - he was confident enough in that. The second part scared him slightly - writing essays wasn’t his strong suit, but he’d seared the entirety of Catcher in the Rye into his mind. He could do this. He had to.

“Alright students, phones off, clear your desks,” Mr. Lancer announced with a stack of papers in hand. “I want to get these passed out to you as soon as possible so you have the full amount of time to complete it. A reminder that there are two parts - don’t forget to do both of them.”

The teacher looked around the room. “Best of luck to all of you, and enjoy your break.” His smile did little to ease Danny’s nerves. He grabbed his lucky pencil (it was hardly more than a nub at this point) and placed it on his desk, then dragged his sweaty palms against his thighs.

Mr. Lancer reached his desk, gently setting down the exam, and gave Danny an encouraging smile, which he tried his darndest to return, but probably gave more of a grimace.

Danny took a final breath, then dove in.

The first section did some good for Danny’s confidence - he only had trouble with a small handful of the questions, but at least he could take an educated guess. Now onto the essay section.

Three prompts were provided. He only had to answer one.

As he scanned through the list, his heart gave a drop. No, he shook his head. Just gotta read them again. Carefully. I can do at least one of these.

Yet as he read through them again, then again, and a third time, Danny couldn’t help but feel absolutely screwed.

His breathing picked up, hands shaking once more. His thoughts began spiraling until he couldn’t finish one before picking up the next. Danny was panicking.

He nearly jumped out of his seat when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Mr. Lancer looked down at him with a concerned expression. His teacher made a nod to the door, and guided Danny out into the hallway.

“Take a minute, Daniel. Come back inside when you’re ready,” he said with a smile.

Danny leaned against the hallway and slunk down against the wall. How humiliating. He crossed his arms and leaned his head forward. Now I’m gonna fail the test and everyone saw me freaking out about it. Fuck fuck fuck.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there before a soft “Danny?” interrupted his mental spiral. He didn’t move though. He couldn’t.

“Danny, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?” the familiar voice said.

Danny still didn’t answer.

The air around him became colder as the presence approached him. Icy hands grasped his arms and unfolded Danny from his cocoon. Now he was looking into the burning green eyes of Amity Park’s own ghostly hero.

Phantom kneeled in front of him, grabbing Danny’s hands in his.

“I don’t know what happened. But I know you’re upset. I know you’ve been stressed, and working so hard the last few weeks.” As he spoke, Phantom gave Danny’s hands a comforting squeeze.

“I’m gonna fail,” Danny croaked.

Phantom’s face hardened. “Don’t say that. You don’t know that. As long as you get back in there and finish what you started, you cannot fail.

“You’re the smartest person I know, Danny. I’m so proud of you. And whatever happens, you should be proud too. Now can you just take some deep breaths for me?”

The two sat in silence, hands still intertwined, as Phantom watched Danny steady himself. It wasn’t a cure-all, but Phantom’s presence was doing something to bring Danny back to earth.

“Okay,” he said, a little shakily. “I’m gonna go finish my exam.”

Phantom leaned his forehead forward so that it was touching Danny’s. “You got this babe,” he whispered, then planted a kiss on Danny’s cheek before swiftly disappearing.

Danny swallowed, stood up, and went back inside.

#cw: panic attack #ask #pitch pearl #danny phantom #lavswordvomit

72 notes · View notes

lexosaurus · 5 months

Text

The Fog Around Us: Chapter 1

Hello all here's my second fic for the @ecto-implosion! This one with @nightwanderers12081 who did AN INCREDIBLE PIECE OF ART LOOK AT IT!

Please enjoy my accompanying fic!

read on: [ao3]

[see all chapters]

Characters: Danny Fenton, Valerie Gray Tags: Amnesiac Danny Fenton, Enemies to Friends WC: 4476 Summary: Two weeks had passed since Danny Fenton went missing. Two weeks had passed since Phantom had disappeared as well. It couldn't be coincidence.

****

“He can't have gotten far.”

Those were the words Valerie had heard the first day the missing child report had been filed. The first day Danny didn't show up to school.

“You kidding, Fenton?” Dash said, emphasizing Danny's name with the sort of disbelief one would say about a toddler training for the Olympics. “No—no way! He's so annoying, I bet whoever nabbed him will get so pissed at his loser squeaky voice that they'll toss him right out of their truck. They probably didn't even get him out of the city!”

“No way he's gotten far,” Kwan agreed.

The next day in homeroom, it had come from Sam. She hadn't been in school the previous day. Well, she had at first, but after the whispers started going around and the police showed up at the school, she and Tucker had been pulled to the main office all too quickly.

“He can't have gone far,” she whispered to Tucker, who was wringing his red cap around in his fingers. “It's Danny we're talking about. He's probably—you know. He's fine.”

Tucker was silent for a moment. To an outsider, it would look like he simply had nothing to say. But Valerie knew better. She could see how his jaw twitched, just barely suppressing whatever words were swimming around in his mind. It was only after his muscles relaxed that he finally spoke, his voice so quiet that Valerie almost didn't pick up what he said. “I know you want to think that, but Danny wouldn't...do this. He wouldn't slip away without telling us first.”

Whatever temper Tucker swallowed, Sam had no problem spitting out. “You don't know that. You know how he gets!”

“I do know, Sam. There's no way—”

“This is the same guy who—” Sam stuttered, then lowered her voice, hissing something too softly for Valerie to hear.

Tucker's reaction was telling, though. He sighed, not sharply, but still showcasing his frustrations all the same. “This is different. Come on, you know that.”

“I don't want to hear it,” Sam snapped. “He's fine, Tuck.”

And that was that.

Valerie could almost believe them. And god, she yearned to believe them with a fortitude that nearly crushed her heart, but on the third day, she made the mistake of passing by the teacher's lounge.

In an instant, she was plunged back into this new ice-cold reality.

“His parents suspect ghosts,” came the gruff voice of Ms. Tetslaff. “And you know, as wacko as they are, this time? Yeah, I might believe them.”

“It's not too far-fetched. You know that the CPS investigation came up clean. Especially after speaking to Ms. Jasmine Fenton directly, nothing came up that was particularly worrisome from their house. They seem like a good family, albeit a bit to the left. It feels unlikely that any of this could have stemmed from within the home,” Mr. Lancer said.

CPS investigated their house? Valerie thought back, but she didn't remember Danny ever mentioning it. So, why? Why had CPS gone?

“And you know how Mr. Fenton gets whenever a ghost gets near,” Mr. Lancer continued.

“Oh yeah, he's a jumpy one,” Ms. Tetslaff agreed. “Always the first one out of the class.”

“And the last one back, sporting some sort of bruise,” came the voice of the old history teacher. What was her name, Mrs. Sawyer?

No, her name didn’t matter right now. What, with this information piercing every wall around Valerie's mind.

Danny was...getting hurt? And she hadn't noticed?

But she didn't have long to process this before Mr. Falluca took his chance to interject. “Didn't I tell you? After that whole CPS debacle? I told you all it was ghost related. I told you that the parents are weird, but Danny was always getting hurt around a ghost attack or on his way to school.”

He was what?

Why hadn't Valerie seen anything? Or heard anything?

“And I agreed if you'll recall,” Mr. Lancer said.

“I wouldn't be surprised if a ghost kidnapped him this time,” Mr. Falluca said.

“To get to his parents, most likely. The weekly harassment wasn't getting anywhere, so they had to escalate,” Mr. Lancer concluded.

“Poor kid,” Ms. Tetslaff murmured.

“Indeed. And if that's truly the case, then who knows how far they've gone. They're ghosts, after all.”

But Valerie was through listening to the teacher's gossip. She backed from the door, stumbled over her feet, and bolted around the corner, nearly slamming into some upperclassmen as she did.

No...no way....Danny? Her Danny?

She'd broken up with him so he wouldn't get hurt, hadn't she? She'd predicted this. Ghosts were ruthless and vengeful and ugh, she had let him go to prevent this from happening!

And yet!

And yet...

She skidded to a stop, her heart thundering in her ears. Around her, the hallway bled Casper High red, posters about kindness and unity hung haphazardly over the walls, and the ever-long fractals of lockers wove spiderwebs around her vision.

And yet, he'd been hurt anyway. No, it was worse than that. He'd been hurting the whole time, and she hadn't known. He'd...never told her.

But why would he? It wasn't like he knew that she was the Red Huntress. Maybe if she'd revealed this to him, he would have told her about the ghosts harassing him. Maybe she could have done something. Maybe, maybe it wouldn't have come to this.

Now, it was too late. Danny was gone.

And she had to bear the weight of the blame.

Her breath shortened, and hot tears sprang to her eyes too quickly for her to will away. They spilled down her cheeks and splashed onto the disgusting red and white tile below her.

She should wipe them off, stop crying, suck it up. She couldn't break down now, not while Danny was out there with god only knew which rogue now.

But shit, it was her fault.

Her weakness got to her, and she found herself standing before the row of lockers with her forehead pressed against the cool metal. Her curly hair fell around her, shielding her from the view of any potential onlookers. But thankfully, the science hallway—tucked in its own small corner of the school—was always nearly deserted while classes were in session.

She should have saved Danny. She should have noticed something, anything. What was even the point of having all this gear if she couldn't protect the people she cared about most?

She wanted to crumble, to disintegrate into a pile of dust on the floor. She held her hand against her mouth, choking back sobs that tried to rip from the core of her diaphragm, but she knew that the lunch period was nearly over and it would only be a matter of minutes before the hall was populated once again.

So she breathed. In, then out. First, nothing but a shaky jolt, and then steadier. In and out until the thick tears had reduced to rubble, and her sobs were nothing but hiccups.

And then she made a promise to herself. One to bring Danny back home.

She may have failed to protect him before, but she wouldn't fail to save him this time.

She wouldn't.

****

The air was still tonight—unusual for this particularly windy fall—and it was as if Valerie could hear every secret Amity Park whispered into the stars. Every owl hoot in the surrounding air, every soft click of someone’s heels on the pavement below.

There was a certain serenity to these kinds of nights, ones that were bathed in countless stars glittering in the air above. Not that Valerie had really cared about silly things like the stars before. But after she began donning flight in her red suit alone, they became a source of comfort to her. A constant that she could count on—if the clouds allowed so.

And it was all thanks to one particular boy that she had even looked up in the first place, hadn’t it?

The past two weeks, she found herself leaning on their comfort more as she spent the nights searching, and searching, and searching some more.

But where should she look? She didn’t know. It had been so long that he could be anywhere. There was a chance—a very likely chance—he wasn’t in Amity Park at all.

Especially if what she’d heard about him was true.

It was Johnny 13 who had let it slip. After a week of no leads, of no sleep, Valerie had the rather unfortunate pleasure of running into the biker ghost himself.

Or, maybe the fortunate pleasure. Because after cornering him and pressing her gun to his temple, his silver tongue was all too eager to spill.

“The kid?” Johnny had asked.

“Fenton. Son of the ghost hunters? Maybe you’ve heard of him.” Valerie wedged her gun into his skin just a little more.

“Jeez, cool it. Yeah, I’ve heard of him. Kid’s damn annoying enough on his own without his parents getting involved.”

Confusion sliced through her, but she had only just begun to react when Johnny slid out from her hold, reappearing on her other side.

“What are you talking about?” Valerie whirled around, nearly forgetting to keep her gun out in front of her. “Danny? The son? He doesn’t have anything to do with ghosts!”

Johnny barked a vicious laugh. “Oh, is that what he tells you? Man, you humans are so blind. Well, kid’s a good actor, I’ll give him that.”

Then, black cloaked her vision, and she could hardly escape the swirling shadows before she looked up and realized that Johnny 13 was gone. And then, so was his shadow.

That had happened almost a week ago, and since then she had questioned any ghost that crossed her path, but either no one knew or no one would tell her.

As the days stretched on, her suspicion about who could be behind Danny’s disappearance only grew, molted, and then solidified until there was only one ghost it could be.

The one ghost that had—not-so-coincidentally, Valerie was sure—disappeared as well.

In fact, Valerie was sure she hadn’t seen Phantom since before Danny’s disappearance. She tried to remember and…yeah, he hadn’t made any appearance grande nor small over the past two weeks.

That was unusual for him, the ghost that almost seemed to live in Amity Park for how much time he spent here.

So Phantom had to be involved somehow. He just had to. Perhaps he was the one who took Danny, or he could be just an accomplice. Either way, the timing was too exact for him not to be involved at all.

But he was just. Gone.

Valerie had searched high and low, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of him anywhere. And if he was the one who took Danny, then where had they gone? The Ghost Zone?

Valerie tried not to think about that possibility too much.

So when a frighteningly familiar ecto-signature reading popped up on her wristband, Valerie didn’t hesitate to jet over to the source of it. He was just around the block—so close—and soon, she would have answers.

That little asshole thought he could just appear after two weeks of Danny’s disappearance as if everyone was going to welcome him back with open arms? As if nothing ever happened?

Yeah, fuck that.

Drawing her weapons was a subconscious action at this point. Valerie didn’t have to think before her gun of choice had formed in her hand—black, with red on the side. Sleek and deadly, just like her.

She whipped around the corner of a building, looked out into the street, and there he was, hovering thirty feet above the sidewalk. Bathed in white with wild hair floating around him as if underwater and his black and white suit unmistakable against the Amity Park skyline, there was Phantom.

He was slow to face her, but that only worked to her advantage. Because as soon as it clicked in his head what was happening, Valerie was already on him, her gun trained at his forehead, her eyes fiery with weeks of untapped fury as she shouted, “What the hell did you do to him?”

Phantom blinked once, his eyes flickering to the gun, then Valerie, then to the gun again. He blinked again, this time slow, and perhaps so obtuse and obnoxious that Valerie couldn’t help but press her ectoweapon into his aura as she yelled, “I’ll fucking kill you again, Phantom! I’m not playing. Tell me what happened to him! What did you do to Fenton?”

Knitted eyebrows shot up along with his hands, and he jolted back as if seeing the gun for the first time. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hang on, what are you talking about?”

But that only enraged Valerie even more. “Don’t play dumb with me!”

“Seriously, I don’t know what’s going on! I don’t even know who that is!”

“You disappear for two weeks the same time as Fenton does, and now you’re claiming to not know anything?” Valerie’s glare narrowed as red tinged the edges of her vision. “Seriously, how much of a dumbass do you think I am? Spill! What the fuck happened to him? What did you do?”

He inched back more, his hands clasping, unclasping, then dropping once again. There was a nervous energy around him, and Valerie noticed—odd—that his chest seemed to be rising and falling almost as if he were hyperventilating.

But no, that wasn’t possible. “Answer me!” she snapped.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! Do I even know you?”

Valerie could have laughed at the sheer audacity of Phantom, but then she looked at him—really looked at him. His wide eyes quivering in anxiety, his ears which seemed to be pointed lower than usual, his panicked stance, and his fast…breathing…and suddenly, Valerie wasn’t sure anymore. Because the Phantom she knew would have made a stupid quip, shot her gun, and darted away.

But this? This Phantom? The one having anxiety before her?

This Phantom was almost pitiful.

She felt her grip on her gun weaken, and her arm lowered ever so slightly. “You don’t…remember me?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, but I think you have me confused for someone else!” he said, drawing his palms up once again in surrender. “I’ve never met you.”

…How?

She tried again, gritting her teeth and drawing her gun back to full force. “Oh no, you don’t get to do that game with me, ghost! Tell me what you did to Danny. Now.”

“I don’t know who that is!” he pleaded. “I’m serious! You have to believe me.”

Why did she believe him?

No, he was a ghost. Ghosts were conniving and evil. They were made to trick humans into getting their way. Valerie knew this. It was as ingrained into her as any self-defense move was.

So then, why? Why could she look into his acid-green eyes and instinctively know that he was telling the truth?

“What do you mean by that?” she pressed further. “I saw you just a few weeks ago. Hell, you live here. I know you do, even if you refuse to admit it.”

“I don’t—I don’t know. Really, I don’t know what you want from me. I’ve never been here, I promise! I was in the Infinite Realms and—”

“What? Where were you?”

The glow in his eyes flickered, and his nervous energy was suddenly so palpable that Valerie could almost taste it. “The Infinite Realms! You know, where all the ghosts live!”

But…Phantom had only ever called that the Ghost Zone. Like all the other humans did.

Infinite Realms? Was that…what the ghosts called it?

“I’ve only ever been there, I promise! I just…just woke up there one day, and I’ve been there ever since. I only got here—the Human World—a few minutes ago. There was a portal. Green, swirling light? You know? And I flew through it. I swear that’s the truth,” he insisted. “I promise I’ve never been here before. I didn’t know it was forbidden to come to your territory. I’m sorry! Once another portal comes, I can leave—uh, what’s your name?”

What. The. Fuck.

Valerie hovered in the air, stunned, staring into the eyes of a ghost she knew like the back of her hand, but one who didn’t seem to know…anything about her, about Amity, about anything.

“You are Phantom, right?” Valerie asked.

“That—that’s what the other ghosts call me,” he said.

So…this was Phantom. It wasn’t some strange clone or anything. So then, what the fuck was going on?

“But you don’t know who I am?”

“No,” he said, then his eyes widened once more. “Am I supposed to?”

A fit of hilarious anger surged through Valerie, and she wanted to snap at him that of course he should know! What was he, stupid? But almost as that spiked her, it dissolved away.

It wouldn’t have been fair to be angry at this Phantom. This one had no idea who she was, he didn’t know their history, and he apparently knew nothing about Amity Park, which Valerie had more than assumed had become his haunt.

Deep breaths, then. She needed to figure out what the hell was going on, then she could give Phantom a ginormous piece of her mind.

“You’ve been here before,” she explained. “A lot, actually.”

“I haven’t, I swear,” he insisted again in a panic, eyeing the gun that Valerie had forgotten was still between both of them.

She dropped her arm, though she didn’t retract the gun into her suit. One could never know, with ghosts as duplicative as they were.

“You have,” she retorted, now without the gun backing up her words. “I’ve seen you here more times than I can count. I’m The Red Huntress. That ring a bell at all?”

He shook his head, though his brow was furrowed. “I was born in the Realms like other ghosts, and I’ve only ever been there. I’ve never left!”

This game of ping-pong wasn’t going to work. At least, it could only work so long as Valerie was willing to sacrifice her entire night’s sleep for the cause of Phantom’s mental rehabilitation, which as it stood, she wasn’t.

Okay then. Time for plan B.

She pulled her cell phone out of the pocket in her suit’s thigh and opened TikTok, typing Phantom into the search bar.

“What are you doing?” a panicked voice asked.

She shushed him, eyeing past all the debate and theory videos until she found what she was looking for. Then, without so much as looking past her thumb clicking on the thumbnail, she shoved her phone in Phantom’s face.

He watched what sounded like some sort of compilation video with eyes expanding to comical proportions. Whatever weird fast “breathing” he’d been doing before was picking up again, and if it weren’t for Valerie’s adept reflexes, he probably would have swiped her phone out of her hands when he made to lunge for it.

“Nuh-uh!” Valerie said, holding her phone back.

“That can’t be right!” Phantom said, turning on her. “I swear, it’s not me!”

“It’s from a month ago, glow-boy!” she said. “There’s literally thousands of videos of you on here from the past year!”

He halted, his body growing rigid. “The past…how long?”

“Year,” Valerie repeated. She clicked another video and turned up her volume in time for the video Phantom to say a truly god-awful pun.

“Year?” Phantom’s voice was breathy. He wasn’t looking at the phone anymore, but Valerie could see him flinch at hearing his voice. “But that…no, that can’t be right.”

“I think your brain is having a hardware issue,” video Phantom said. “Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on?”

“You just don’t understand my BRILLIANCE!” a nasal voice screeched.

“Technus, your brain is slower than an Internet Explorer loading screen. I wouldn’t exactly call that brilliant.”

The Phantom in front of her shook his head incessantly. “That’s not me. It can’t be.” However, his voice sounded anything but convincing.

“It obviously is. What, you think I just made up a bunch of videos to confuse you?” Valerie snorted. “Give me a break.”

“But…I’ve only been a ghost for a few weeks! See? That can’t be me.”

A few weeks?

But that’s…

Valerie swiped down to the next video, this one a close-up of Phantom’s face grinning down at the camera below. He brought his gloved hands up behind his pointed ears like moose antlers, sticking his tongue out as he did. His white fangs poked out of the corners of his lips, his smile stretching until he broke into laughter.

The Phantom before her was sheet white.

“I’m only a few weeks old,” he begged quietly, hiding his eyes behind his hands as if Valerie’s phone screen was displaying imagery too horrific to look at. “This is impossible. I’ve been in the Infinite Realms. It’s…this is…no…”

“Phantom, I’ve known you for months.” Valerie leaned in, but as if sensing her, he reeled back, curling into himself.

“Is that how everyone knew who I was?” Phantom peered up from his hands.

“Who?”

“The other ghosts. They…they acted like they knew me. Like I should know them. But I’d never met them before.”

Valerie didn’t know what ghosts he was talking about specifically, but she had a general idea. “You have. You do know them.”

Phantom reached for her phone again, and this time Valerie let him have it. But, to her amusement, when he jabbed his finger at her screen, nothing happened.

“You have to take your gloves off.”

Phantom’s brows furrowed, and he surveyed his hands as if seeing the gloves for the first time.

“Do they come off?” he asked himself mildly.

“They do,” Valerie answered, even though she was sure he didn’t expect her to. And sure enough, at his look, she explained, “I’ve seen you do it before.”

“Oh.”

He handed her phone back to gently peel the white hazmat gloves from his suit. To his shock, but not Valerie’s, as soon as they left the vicinity of his aura, they simply dissolved into a green goo that began falling like rain before evaporating into the air.

“So that’s how that works,” he mused.

On one of his hands was the faint green glow of lightning that spindled up his wrists and disappeared into his suit. It was something that Valerie had seen before but never had the balls to ask about. Considering how much Phantom didn’t seem to know about, well, anything, she was sure as shit not getting that answer tonight either.

But on his other wrist was something interesting. And it was a small, skin-tight metal wristband.

“What’s that?” Valerie nodded toward the wristband.

“Huh?” Phantom asked, following her eyes to the bracelet. “Oh, I don’t know. I woke up with it, so I must have died in it. It’s how our outfits work, I think. Well, until you get powerful enough to change your appearance.”

Valerie filed away that bit of ghost lore for later. Her Phantom was never so forthcoming about the inner workings of ghosts as this.

“No, you didn’t. I’ve never seen that before, and I’ve seen you with your gloves off.”

“Well, I don’t remember. Maybe I was starting to figure out how to change my appearance before I got like this?” He reached for the phone, clearly uninterested in talking about a silly bracelet when his entire world seemed to be imploding.

Valerie relented, handing it over. But, to his growing agitation and her further amusement again, his fingers had little impact on the screen.

“How the hell do you work one of these?” he growled.

“You might be too cold. What are you trying to do?”

“I’m trying to see if I knew that ghost! The metal one that was attacking me in the Realms yesterday!”

Valerie plucked her phone out of his fingers. “Okay, chill. Did he tell you his name?”

“Yeah. Said it about a million times.” He rolled his eyes. “Skulker, greatest hunter in the Ghost Zone. That’s what he said, anyway.”

“Oh, you definitely know him,” Valerie said, while still typing Ghost Skulker into the TikTok search bar. Sure enough, hundreds of videos appeared before her displaying the same annoying face in various poses on her screen. She clicked on one and handed her phone over to him.

His reaction made Valerie wonder if a ghost could jump out of its own skin. “What?! How? How is this possible?”

“I told you, we all know you! You’ve been around for a little while longer than a few weeks, Phantom!”

She took the phone from his fingers. Just in time too, because he looked about ready to kneel over.

Could ghosts faint? As soon as the question popped into her mind, she realized that she didn’t want to test that theory. She barely knew what to do when a human fainted, let alone a ghost. And Valerie wasn’t one to start coddling ghosts.

She sighed, then glanced around. “Hey, wanna sit and talk for a minute?” She gestured over to the tall office building nearby. “If you like heights and privacy, I know a good rooftop.”

He squinted as if trying to figure out if he knew that roof. And then Valerie remembered all the nights on patrol, ambushing Phantom on that same building.

She thought back. What had he been doing those nights?

“Sure,” he said, breaking her out of her thoughts.

Right. She didn’t have time to waste on Phantom’s silly actions. She was here for Danny. And somehow, this amnesiac was connected—she was absolutely certain of it.

They flew over and touched down on the roof, Valerie’s hoverboard retracting into her boots. She looked over to see Phantom’s flight tail morph into legs before he cautiously hit the roof as if he were afraid of breaking it. He looked down curiously at the ply and gravel roof before crouching down and…touching it? With his ungloved fingers?

What the hell?

As if noticing her staring, he answered, “Everything here feels weird. It’s missing that charge.”

“Charge?”

He glanced back at Valerie. “Yeah, the charge from the ectoplasm.”

“You can feel that?”

“You can’t?”

Okay…yet another weird thing to file about ghosts. Apparently, they had some sort of sixth sense for ectoplasm.

It was like every single word out of this idiot’s mouth left Valerie with more questions. For a moment, she wondered if that was on purpose. If he was using his classic ghostly manipulation to try to distract her from asking about Danny.

But then, she looked back down at him rubbing the grains of rock and pebble between his fingers, and yeah…no freaking way this was an act. Her Phantom was an idiot, but not this stupid.

So what the hell was going on?

****

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