#halfa biology

[bumblebeug]

DPxDC Idea for Lazarus Water/ Prompt

Ok so Extoplasm is thought of as being corrosive right?

What if Walker hated having real world object in the ghost zone was because they would eventually dissolve and contaminate the ectoplasm that touched it? Usually not a problem because the ectoplasm dissolves the object and the ghost zone filters it out naturally by just passing the dissolved real world item back into the living realm somewhere. Its why sometimes people feel the hair on the back of their neck stand up on a hot day like they've passed through a cold spot (because generally when the dissolved real world item comes back to the living world, its gaseous).

The problem is, however, if enough real world objects get dissolved at once, it gathers into a heavy pool (Lazarus water) that will eventually leech into the real world somewhere in a nongaseous form. Which is a huge problem because when those open up, it means that humans can more easily access the ectoplasm because since its now a living/dead substance and can be absorbed and, in most cases, abused by humans. Of course the effects of taking a dip don't last long because it eventually evaporates out through a humans pores and, like,, liver.. which is why repeated dips into the pool are needed. Also the bigger the pool, the more gravity it exerts drawing more dissolving real world items to it.

Which, for Walker, is a paperwork nightmare because its hard to disperse these pools once they occur (in general most sane ghosts don't also want to be contaminated). The solution, in Walkers eyes, is prevention over clean-up which is why he's so ridiculously strict about real world items in the Zone.

But say a big enough pool forms.

SO Walker catches Danny and instead of jailing him decides "Hey this kid is already a dead/alive mix, maybe it'll be easier for him to disperse the stuff" and sentences Danny to community service.

Here's the thing though- Walker was wrong, the pool has more pull on Danny because of his unique biology and essentially sucks him in when Danny approaches it.

Where does Danny end up? Thats right- either in Gotham's Lazarus pit or the Al-Ghul's pit.

I'd like to think the trip through a pool would sorta fry Danny's system (due to his unique) until enough Lazarus water evaporates off of him so he's stuck as, like, a combined form Fenton/Phantom because of the overload to his system. And he can't leave until that happens (sorry Clockwork can't help because he's...busy)

Maybe he has half white hair/half black hair and one blue/ one glowing green eye.

Anyways, I think this would be a really fun concept.

Batfamily would have a field day with this.

[absolutely-esme]

My halfas and clones headcanon

I see a lot of stories use the idea that Dani continues to be a fundamentally unstable clone who continues needing treatment for the rest of her life or even ends up melting even with treatment.  This surprised me because it went against some assumptions that I had forgotten were my idea in the first place.  I figured I would share them, in case anyone was interested.

My headcanon about how halfas (or Dannny at least) work is that the state of being is, first and foremost,  a survival adaptation.  

I imagine that the portal works by overlapping the space inside it with a corresponding space in the ghost zone.  Basically,  both spaces exist in the same space for a brief time as the portal is opening.   This would have been all fine and dandy had those spaces only contained air and inert ectoplasm, but that's not what happened.

Danny's body was put under a kind of stress that would not usually be survivable by having a hole in reality torn through the space he was occupying.  Due to the portal opening into the afterlife,  his ghost started forming right where his not-quite-dead-yet human body was.  Now his dying human body and his still-forming ghost are both in the untenable position of existing in half of the overlapped space they are occupying.  In a last-ditch attempt at survival,  the two fuse into one body which is able to fully exist in the space it occupies,  which allows the portal to finish opening as Danny is no longer in the way.  This all happens in the space of a second.  

In the following weeks,  Danny experiences a lot of craziness as the two halves of his biology integrate into a functional system.  Danny's ghost half acts as a kind of glue and maintenance system that keeps his body together and functional come hell or high water, and his human half provides a stable framework for his ghost half that allows it to keep its structure without expending energy on actively holding it.   

This being the case, Danny's ghostly half doesn't have to put as much into maintaining its physical form because it has his human half's sturdy structure made up of proteins and Calcium and whatnot.  That's why Danny changes back when he's exhausted or kOed.  If there’s one thing physical matter is good at, it's continuing on as-is without being acted on by outside forces.

Vlad did not take this into account while trying to make clones entirely from ectoplasm, which he could get for free from the ghost Zone, without any of the componentsfrom which a human body is made.  The clones didn't have that secondary structure,  so when their bodies tried to lean on it, they failed and lost structural integrity.   

Dani was a little heartier because the first thing she did was ask Danny for food and dig in when he gave her a whole lot.  This resulted in Dani's body having a collection of proteins, vitamins, minerals, etc to put to use.  Not enough to form a complete body without her ghostly side working overtime, but enough to take some of the strain off it.  

The reason Dani remained unstable after escaping Vlad the first time was because she was facing food insecurity as a homeless child.  What the Fenton Ecto-Dejecto did was one of two things.  Either it beefed up her ghostly side to let her function in a manner more similar to a full ghost, or it energized her and bought her time feed herself up.

To put it simply,  Danny's clones were unstable because Vlad didn't feed them.  They didn't need a mid-morf DNA sample, they needed the Emergency Ham.

[miscmonstro]

The Uno Reverse Adoption Saga

First: You are here

Next: Chapter 2

Fandoms: Danny Phantom, Batman (DC)

Specifically, Halfa!Trio Au crossover with Batman

Current Characters: Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, Danny Fenton, Jason Todd

Summary: Forced to attend a gala by her parents as she is every year, Sam Manson was resigned to suffer through the stifling three-night gala until something pulled at her core. The something turned out to be a someone. Just who is Jason Todd and can the trio gain enough of his trust and help him before his struggling proto-core collapses?

��� {Chapter 1 Below!)

Danny groaned within the confines of his mind, exasperation and irritation and just a bit of fear welling up in his chest. 

His disgruntlement did not go unacknowledged. Danny wasn’t alone, even in his mind, and he hadn’t been for quite some time. Somewhere in Amity Park Tucker sent a wave of comfort in return, and he too was uneasy of the trip Danny’s eccentric parents had forced him to accompany them on. 

Sam, on a plane to Gotham, had her own problems and replied with a simple vague sentiment akin to ‘what can you do’ with less words. Her weariness seeped into it, making it feel quite resigned. It was as though she was awaiting some awful fate she’d long accepted and… no, that's exactly what it was. 

Tucker broke the relative silence across the link with an unrepentant, “At least one of us is going to survive to Christmas.”

Danny responded with the impression of bashing his own head onto a wall and Sam began to seethe. Despite her best efforts, her mind circled back to the annual gala her parents demanded she attend alongside them. It was hosted by a different snob every year, and while the scenery might have been different, the atmosphere was always the same. Without fail it would be simmering with thinly concealed flaunting and heavy with thick lies pasted atop one another.

Sam wished she could tell her parents no. She wished she didn’t have to do this. She would never voice those complaints and misgivings about the Christmas gala ever again, and not just because of Desiree. 

Every year Sam wanted to scream and every year she smiled and let her parents pick her outfits and acted like the perfect daughter. She couldn’t afford to be anything less at the Christmas galas and it made her want to hurl at the plastic cutout she endured becoming for those horrid days. Hurl, or commit a murder.

“I’m doomed. You’ll have to break me out of jail,” Sam muttered in her mind as the second option grew in appeal. “I swear these rich assholes get dumber every year.”

“And my parents get more insane,” Danny added gloomily. 

There was a hint of something from Tucker that Sam could tell wasn’t thought out and she mentally kicked him before he could put his metaphorical foot in his unphysical mouth. Tucker swatted her in retaliation but understood, switching tracks.

“Uh… yeah. That sucks. But we’re halfway through our junior year and then one more year before we’re free from our parents!” Tucker tried to comfort. Danny’s gloom lightened ever so slightly. 

For a few minutes, Sam looked out the window and imagined that she was going anywhere else to do anything else. There was a growing serene calm shared across the link, the tinges of uncertainty ebbing away. She could hear keys clacking away as Tucker typed and she could feel affection for Jazz from Danny as he texted her. 

And then Mr. Fenton startled Danny and unveiled a new anti-ghost device and Danny’s mood plummeted like a twelve ton rock to the bottom of the ocean. 

Tucker winced and tried to think of any joke that wasn’t a pun to lighten the mood.

Sam sighed. It was going to be a long, long break.

👻 {Boo!)

All too soon the plane landed and Sam zoned out while her parents immediately fought over what she should wear like they hadn’t ordered whatever the clothes were weeks ago. Sam had mentally checked out for self preservation the moment she stepped foot off of the plane. This wasn’t her first rodeo and she had the act down pat. Giggle when she was supposed to as her parents showed her off and stand silently behind them when they weren’t. At the seamstress or at the hotel lobby chatting with other rich people, the script was the same. It wouldn’t change for the gala either.

At least the previous two years hadn’t been as horrible with Danny and Tucker a mere thought away. 

The days dragged like an ant crawling through molasses and then the dreaded day arrived. The first night of the gala. Wayne Manor was old, she noted as their limo drew nearer. She could appreciate the architecture at least, and maybe such an old house had a ghost. At least that would be interesting.

Danny pointed out that she didn’t have a thermos.

She quietly conceded his point and wished for something regardless while she smiled blankly as her parents greeted Bruce, the host of the gala this year. With a polite greeting of her own the Mansons departed from the entrance and swept into the manor.

Straight away her parents engaged in some conversation and Sam stood a step behind them. Allowing herself one sad, longing look towards the quiet corners of the room, Sam bitterly wondered why the Christmas galas made her parents fanatical every year. They let her get away with whatever she wanted within reason the rest of the year, but as soon as Christmas was involved they expected her to be a doll.

With that last break of character she let a calm wash over her, perfected from years of galas, and let her perfect daughter mask snap firmly into place. 

“At least they’re only like this once a year,” Tucker commented, trying to look at the positives. 

Sam agreed. If they were so controlling year round then she was sure she’d have run away from them.  

“And at least the fruitloop is a shut in,” Danny added. The three shuddered at the thought of Vlad at the gala, Sam in particular. She didn’t want to handle him alone. Even between the three of them it was tricky to drive him off sometimes, never mind one on one.  

The clock ticked on at an agonizing pace. Eventually her parents sent her off to dance with the son of some CEO they were chatting with and she used the opportunity to escape after the dance. So long as her parents didn’t see her doing anything “unseemly” then she’d be golden for the rest of the night. She made her way over to a relatively secluded corner and cursed at the dress limiting her movements. Just walking felt like a chore in the wretched thing. Sam might have come from a family with money but she rarely dressed it. 

“Mission accomplished for the night,” she told the boys. “If I have to dance in these heels one more time…”

“You’ve almost made it through,” Danny encouraged her.

“And now you can scope out the room! Are there any cute girls?” Tucker prodded cheekily.

Before Sam could mentally reply a strange sensation washed over her. It felt like a gentle tug at her chest, at her core. Her lips parted and a faint golden-yellow mist emerged. 

“Ghost. There’s a ghost here,” Sam said, head snapping up from her cup of stuff she technically shouldn’t have been drinking as she began scanning the room with a critical eye.

“Ask and you shall receive. You totally jinxed yourself Sam,” Danny said, though his concern belied the light comment.

“You can handle it,” Tucker added at her uneasiness. “You’re-“

“No, this is different. I- I feel something in my core,” Sam said with growing alarm as the feeling didn’t fade. “Guys…”

Now it wasn’t just Sam who felt alarmed but they knew by this point how to prevent a crippling spiral of positive feedback. Dread settled in her gut and Sam couldn’t even tell if it was hers. 

“I think it’s tugging me,” Sam noted after a moment of observation. She stepped toward the crowd, toward the pull, and Tucker recoiled. 

“Um, hello, reason here. Shouldn’t you not be heading toward it?” he said.

“But what if it’s hold on her core gets stronger? She needs to do something,” Danny pointed out. 

“It doesn’t feel malicious so I’m assuming the worst. I might need you guys to pull me out of a mind trap,” Sam relayed as she weaved between the other guests.

There were twin nonverbal agreements from Tucker and Danny. Being connected to two other people usually meant that items and people looking to ensnare the mind needed to nab all three of them for anything to take effect, and for that Sam was grateful. 

Sam paused as the pull led her to a wall. Wherever she was being led was outside of the main room. Glancing around, Sam spied a confectionery table and she ducked behind it. Without a thought she turned herself intangible and invisible and walked through the wall, following the pull. After several rooms, some occupied by guests and some not, Sam came across a balcony.

Hunched over the railings was someone wearing a tux. Sam couldn’t see anything spectral about him and that put her on guard more than anything. The ones that were strong enough to appear perfectly human were the ones that always brought the most trouble. She stepped into the empty hall and dropped the ghostly aspects from her human form. 

“Are you alright?” she asked. That was usually a good way to start with nonviolent ghosts.

The person stiffened and whirled around. The first thing that Sam noticed was the tuft of white atop his head and the second thing-

A small cry for help. The tug increased and it almost felt like it wanted to yank her core out of her chest. She swallowed thickly and stood her ground. 

He narrowed his eyes at her ever so slightly. 

“Fine,” he replied curtly after a moment.

Sam scowled in return, a spark of temper rising. “Obviously not.” As much as she’d wished for a ghost earlier she didn’t want to deal with one so late at night, especially not one that could do whatever this was to her core-

“Deep breaths Sam,” instructed Tucker.

Sam inhaled deeply.

Danny prodded her and she refocused on the ghost. He hated when their attention was away from potential dangers for too long. 

“Sorry, I’m a bit short after dealing with,” Sam motioned in the direction of the main room, “all that. But seriously, what’s up?”

The ghost man scoffed and eyed her. “I’m not keen on spilling my guts to a stranger,” he said, voice barely above a hostile growl.

“Fair enough,” Sam said, appraising him. She was given the impression that he too found all the rich people business distasteful. Striding forward, she noted how he tensed as though he was ready to bolt at the drop of a hat. Thrusting her hand out in a very ill-bred manner and hoping it would put him at ease, she said, “I’m Manes.”

The man snorted. “Jason,” he said, accepting the handshake. 

Several things became apparent one after another.

Firstly, she could feel his core as it reached for her. This ghost’s core was so weak, so fragile that it wasn’t even really a core. It was a proto-core, meaning that it wasn’t formed from a death, and this ghost shouldn’t even be outside of the Ghost-Zone. He was basically an infant.

Secondly, the hand was warm. Warm as a human hand was, warm like it was alive.

And with how solid the man was and how fragile the proto-core was, there was no way that he was a ghost.

Sam tried not to stare at the very human man who was also a baby ghost. 

Jason raised a brow at her and she yanked her hand back like the contact burned when she realized that she’d been holding his hand for longer than what was polite.

Danny seemed to be coming to some conclusion as he turned the information around in his mind and Tucker was rooting through what they knew about ghost formation from some of his files. 

“Are you sick?” she blurted. It was the only thing she could think of. If Jason was slowly dying and had something he was passionate enough about to become an obsession then it might be possible that a core had started forming.  

Jason huffed out a puff of air that might have been a laugh. “No.” One of his hands made an aborted motion towards his side, like he was going to grab something and thought better of it. “I just got out here. Can’t I get even a moment to myself?” he complained. 

She snorted. She would’ve been more than happy to leave him to his own devices and would have if it wasn’t for the fact that he was a baby ghost. “Guess not,” she replied instead. 

“Is he a halfa?” Danny wondered.

Sam immediately refuted it, but Tucker wasn’t so sure. 

“It’s better to check,” insisted Danny.

“How can we tell? I have no equipment,” Sam reminded them as she shifted her gaze out over the snowy trees surrounding the manor. Aloud to Jason she said, “This is a pretty spot.” 

She was skeptical. They’d been told over and over how rare halfa were. Besides the three of them, Dani-with-an-i, and Vlad-the-supreme-fruitloop there were no others of their species. The common denominator, excluding Dani who had her own circumstances, was Fenton tech. Sam couldn’t fathom how Jason might have been exposed to a portal unless he was a clone. Turning, she looked him over again.

He was well built, likely had an active lifestyle, and had black hair and blue eyes. Sam found her own eyes drawn to the tuft of white on his head, and now that she thought about it, Vlad had a streak of white in both of his forms. Yet, Jason didn’t look like Vlad. 

Tucker added that he could’ve been a test tube baby and you didn’t have to have one person for that. 

“I don’t think he’s a Vlad experiment. Vlad would’ve never let him go, weak core or no,” Sam pondered.

“Unless he escaped,” Danny agreed.

“But then how’d he end up here?” asked Tucker. That was the most damning question, but life was stranger than fiction. However unlikely it was, they couldn’t discount it until they had proof.

There was a mental knock from Tucker and Sam let him in. He was seeing though her eyes, she could tell, and she made sure Tucker could see Jason’s face.

“Wait- that’s Jason Todd!” Tucker exclaimed with disbelief.

“Who?” Sam and Danny chorused.

“One of Bruce Wayne’s adopted sons. He supposedly died before he turned up alive. Or well, maybe he’s not so alive…”

Danny’s presence joined Tuckers in seeing through her eyes.

Sam was going to have to look into more Jason Todd later, but right now she was incredulous. “He might actually be like us?”

“Or maybe that’s just typical of resurrection?” Danny tentatively offered. “It’s not like we know if he really died or not. And we deal with the already dead. Have we ever even met a resurrected person? Can you really resurrect a person?”

“What do you mean, might be like us?” Jason asked. The hard edge to his voice was back.

“I’m going to tell him,” Sam decided. 

Tucker agreed enthusiastically and Danny cautiously. Jason had a core, however faint, and that meant the Anti-Ecto Acts applied to him.

Sam looked around. “There’s no one nearby, right?”

“No, there isn’t,” Jason replied guardedly.

Sam squinted at him but decided to get on with it. “Alright. Look. You have a core. A weak one, granted, but that’s enough to get you captured and vivisected.”

“What the hell?” Jason asked, rearing back with wide eyes. 

“I have your attention? Good,” Sam said, leaning toward him. “You really died, didn’t you? And when you came back you… well look. Ghosts are real, alright? And you are basically a baby ghost. It… your ghost part is basically screaming for help, that’s how I found you. But!” she said when he opened his mouth, likely to interject, “This means a set of laws called the Anti-Ecto Acts apply to you. By law you are not sentient, never mind other rights. If you get caught you’re toast.”

“Lady you’re insane,” Jason barked, stepping away from her. His core was agitated. 

“I’m trying to keep you after-alive,” she corrected. “The government has these floozies called the Ghost Investigation Ward, but everyone calls them the Guys in White since they wear white. If you see them, run, alright? They’re the ones who will capture and hurt any ghost, even if you’re just minding your own business.”    

Jason shook his head and inched into the hall. “How drunk are you?” he asked.

“Not at all. Listen, just be careful,” Sam sighed.   

Without a backwards glance, Jason left her on the snowy balcony with a snickering Tucker and a pensive Danny.

“Dude, you scared him off,” Tucker chortled.

“I needed to give him the important stuff in case we never meet again,” Sam replied dryly. “Ghosts are hard to accept outside of Amity.”

”I think I’m going to look into how he died and how he might have been brought back,” Tucker announced. Sam could tell he’d already connected with his PDA and was delving into the web for preliminary information, looking for promising leads. 

Danny was nervous but determined. “That’ll help us figure out what he is.”

“It is a new situation,” Sam thought to them as she peered down the hall. 

With a sigh, Danny mentally flopped onto a floor. “I guess I could ask Frostbite about coming back to life and baby ghosts when I get back.”

Sam’s initial, knee jerk reaction was to object and say that they should all go together, but Tucker was already in Amity so Danny wouldn’t be alone.

The two would be fine.

Oh who was she kidding? This was Team Phantom she was thinking about. Something was bound to go awry and she was in no position to help them when the inevitable other shoe dropped.

White, misty condensation swirled in the air as Sam exhaled noisily. She hated this time of year with a passion.

👻 {Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it.)

Next: Chapter 2

[kawaiikenna]

Random thought:

What if already charged ecto-beams can’t just be absorbed back into a halfa’s body? Other, full, ghosts can just let their pre-charged ecto-beams fade away with little to no side effects or consequences. Halfas can’t, because if they do they lose that ectoplasm and it’s kind of like blood loss to a living being. Sure they can do it but if they lose too much it can be muy no bueno.

So now all I can imagine is Danny charging up an ecto-beam then not needing to use it. So what does he do? Pops the sucker in his mouth like it’s not some kind of very volatile and highly heated energy ball. No, according to Danny it tastes, and feels, like a slightly off flavor flamin hot cheeto. Has the same texture and everything.

[stormhaven257]

So you know how people say that Danny is more powerful than Vlad because he died slowly to prolonged exposure while Danny died in an instant? Well you also know that most people say ghosts form when someone dies around ambient ectoplasm and usually the more ectoplasm the more powerful?

Well what if the reason Danny is more powerful is because he died instantly to the force of the entire ghost zone being forcibly shoved into his body. Unlike Vlad, Danny died to a fully functioning ghost portal that had a shit load of ectoplasm running through it at all times. Vlad had a small (but probably condensed) amount of ectoplasm shoved into every orifice of his body that they tried to remove.

Danny could be considered a perfect halfa- he was dead and alive at the same time, he was in the ghost zone and was in the human world at the same time too. Vlad was partly on both accounts.

But that's just my thoughts on the whole thing- I want to talk about Dani but she's... a bit harder to explain.

[its-rat-time-babey]

Headcanon:

Just like how halfas can choose how their rings form and travel across their bodies, they can change the colour of the rings to whatever they want. They can also choose how bright the rings are, ranging from “barely any light at all” to “blinding flashbang”.

Danny prefers the default white colour because the bright white light that the rings create can make it harder to see him transforming into Phantom. They just see a bright white flash of light and then Phantom appears. Even when he actively chooses to make his rings less bright when transforming for whatever reason, the bright white of the rings still helps conceal his identity.

Vlad on the other hand prefers black rings with little to no light. He prefers to make it so he doesn’t give off his location with a bright light every time he transforms, and when transforming in low light situations (the sort of environment that Vlad prefers transforming in because he often doesn’t want to risk being seen) the black rings are practically invisible. Vlad seems to just just disappear and be replaced by Plasmius or vice versa.

[aikoiya]

DP HC - Liminality

I recently read an hc about liminality that I liked. It suggested that because organics & ectoplasm are 2 different forms of matter, that you can be 100% ghost & 100% human at the same time & that's how liminality works instead of what I formerly liked to use, which was 50/50.

At the same time, I'd like to put my own twist on it. There is a difference between being ecto-liminal & being a halfa.

For instance, liminality isn't so much being 100% human & 100% ghost as it is being a percentage human & different percentage ectoplasm. Halfas are actually a range of a percentage organic living being & a different percentage of ghost. The most powerful being 100% organic & 100% ghost such as Danny. This 100/100 status of halfa is the utmost rare. So far, there is literally only one in existence.

There's a big difference between having ectoplasm in you & being an actual ghost which is what being a halfa is.

If you are a halfa, then you are also liminal, but if you are liminal, that doesn't automatically make you a halfa.

Anyone can be ecto-liminal with the right background, but not just anyone can be a halfa.

Ecto-liminality is based on a mix of genetics & environment. It's something that builds up over several generations being exposed to ectoplasm or ectoplasmic entities.

However, you don't just become a halfa unless certain needs are met.

For one, you need to die & then be revived quickly enough that either the tether between body & spirit hasn't broken or it reconnects (in Danny's case, his entire body was atomized by electricity, the force of which created a tear in the membrane between universes, his molecules were flooded with raw ectoplasm to the point that a Core formed almost instantly & his body was reconstructed with ectoplasm in each & every cell in his body; done so quickly that his spirit & his body still occupied the same space, then more electricity restarted his heart, causing his Core to be anchored to his body), but not just in any way. It has to be in such a way that a Core forms during the interim & not everyone who dies becomes a ghost. Certain things need to happen.

Some of the reasons why some people become ghosts & others don't have remained a mystery, but what is known is that the individual needs to, at least subconsciously if not consciously, have a will or desire to remain in this life strong enough that they are able to resist the pull of death & of The End.

You also need a purpose or destiny that still needs to be fulfilled.

And you need earthly attachments strong enough to anchor you.

Without these things, you won't become a ghost.

Not only that, but a lot of ectoplasm needs to be in the process, which is what fast-tracks the formation of a Core.

Not to mention, there needs to be a catalyst in you that works as a buffer which would allow you to survive the process, otherwise, what would've made you a halfa, will just kill you & only possibly make you a full ghost.

It's also not as easy as a natural portal forming on top of someone. That would just send then to the GZ, not turn them halfa.

Not to mention, just because someone is a 100/100 liminal while alive that going through this process automatically means they'll also be a 100/100 halfa.

As mentioned before, you need a catalyst. Such can range from you having magic in you, to having a powerful ancestor such as a diety. Death deities are the best as they are adapted to things like ectoplasm & death magic.

Danny, Jazz, & Sam are all Legacies of death deities & thus their percentages will be higher than most. Danny & Jazz were also 100/100 liminal due to generations of Fenton & Fenton-Nightingale exposure to ectoplasmic entities & living in places with thin spots as supernatural hunters.

Sam, Tucker, & Valerie have only had the benefits of living in a thin spot for a few generations, but Amity does have a Lazarus Pit that filters into the drinking water & that has raised the percentage. Sam & Tucker specifically also had the benefit of being Danny's best friends & thus they were exposed whenever they went over to his house & were even more exposed after the accident. As such, Sam would be around 100/75 & Tucker would be 100/60.

Vlad was only somewhat ecto-contaminated due to his workings with the Fentons & has no history of exposure before that. Nor does he come from a line of hunter's or even have a godly ancestor. As such, his percentage is actually pretty low. The only real thing he had going for him were dormant dragon blood, a strigoi ancestor, being revived as a lugat, & his ecto-herpies slowly contaminating him more & more over time. As a result, he's actually 100% lugat & about 50% ghost.

Now, take for instance, Jason Todd. Much like the Fentons, he also had hunter ancestors, & in fact, is a Fenton-Nightingale himself, & his family for at least 3 generations back have lived in Gotham, which has a Lazarus Pit too & is also a thin spot. Even if it doesn't have a portal like Amity, it has a low-mid level of ambient ectoplasm at all times, much like Amity did before the portal. As such, Jason had a higher percentage of ectoplasm than most, all of the bats do. Bruce, Tim, & Damian especially do to also having Fenton-Nightingale ancestry. Dick has higher than normal, but not nearly as much as the others as he'd been a circus boy who traveled around.

Technically, Jason is somewhere halfway between liminal & halfa, & due to the Pit of Nanda Parbat being not only corrupted, but dark magic having been used to keep the corruption from filtering out, his Pseudo-Core's formation has been severely stunted. If I were to guess, he'd be 100/95 ectoplasm in favor of human.

For more on my DP hcs, go to my Ghost Zone Masterlist.

[nerdpoe]

Not all of Vlad's cloning attempts failed aside from Dani. There was one more, but since it was already dissolving, he gifted it to an old friend so they could study it. Lex had apparently been working with Cadmus to make a clone and was...having a bit of a hard time.

Unbeknownst to Vlad, Lex managed to save the clone and stabilize it by introducing Kryptonian DNA. He also successfully aged up the clone to sixteen.

Kon has no idea.

Until he does.

[radiance1]

[Another Teddy Bear Danny au]

So after the accident, 5-year-old Danny didn't end up in the zone, but instead on his parents basement floor like usual.

A while later his parents have been running tests on him, nothing that would hurt, only things like checking the condition of his body, using a stethoscope to see if he still had a heart, drawing a bit of lifeblood (via syringe) and testing his genetic makeup.

Nothing like dissection, like they would've wanted to do to any other ghost, but not to their son, never. Every test they put him through is utterly safe and harmless.

Like, a visit to the doctor's office.

Even giving him some candy for his efforts, when they found out he could manipulate his body to gain a mouth and the cutest little fangs. Surprisingly, he still had organs, except his stomach acid has been replaced by ectoplasm, that seemed to breakdown whatever food thrown in there into pure energy.

After the tests, they send him off so they could... work on a few things. Mostly the results of their tests, and how to make the ghost portal decidedly less lethal than it was currently capable of being to not have a repeat of this incident.

After working through all of the tests they could do, they finally let him leave the house, after determining that everything should be fine for his current body.

What a mistake that was.

You see, not a lot of people in Amity Park really practiced stranger danger. Everyone looked out for each other, most people knew everyone in certain ways, and tourists were basically null, so they didn't have much to fear in that area.

So, children were just allowed to go out and about because they basically knew most of the adults.

Of course, such a thing came back to bite them hard in the ass. For under a little a week, was Danny kidnapped.

By who? The Fentons had no way of knowing.

===

Danny really liked the man in white, they were really nice! Heapproached him while he was out on the playground. Jazz dropped him off here and said she would be back in a few minutes because she wanted to go get something that she forgot, even said on the way back she would get ice cream!

A while later, while he was trying to climb up the ladder of the slide, he was struggling to do so, then the guy helped him up to the top of the slide! He even did it more than once too!

Then, when he was in the sandpit, he was a bit weirded out because the sudden lack of kids in the playground, but it was fine! The guy even helped him make sandcastles, he was really, really good at making sandcastles, and even helped Danny make the bestest one he's ever seen!

Another while later, and Danny was getting a bit concerned about where Jazz was, she said she wouldn't be long, but it was a while since he saw her. He was waiting with his new friend for a bit, before a bit more time later his friend suggested that they go find her.

So, Danny sat in his friend's arm, and they left to go find his sister.

===

Jazz was running far later than she thought she would've. Due to repeated interruptions along the way, but she bought Danny a bigger portion of ice cream as apology, so she hopes he would forgive her for taking so long.

When she got there, the ground was entirely empty.

She looked around desperately for her brother, before running home to tell her parents.

===

Danny like experiments, so they didn't hurt, only felt a lil bit funny, like ticklish funny, and he gets some candy at the end of it too!

So, yea, Danny did like experiments.

Now though, he found he only liked the experiments done by his parents. They didn't hurt, and felt comfortable and safe because his parents were there and because they made it as comfortable as they could.

But the ones done by the people in white suits and lab coats didn't feel comfortable, or safe.

They hurt.

Blunt things didn't hurt, as they soon realized because of his cotton stuffed body, and his organs were also quite resilient to blunt force. Then they cut him open, and that hurt, hurt so much that he cried and wailed and shook his everything to try and get them to stop.

But they didn't stop, never stopped. They even took pride and joy in making him squirm around. They looked at and treated him as if he wasn't even human, which yea he techna- technicly- technically wasn't anymore since he heard his parents talking about it but still, they were being really mean.

They said words that went right over his head, at least when his parents used words like that, hey explained what it meant in smaller words.

He hated this place, he hated the men in white suits, and he hated the ones in lab coats even more.

He wanted to go back home.

===

5 years later, the GIW base was raided due the Anti-Ecto acts being a violation of rights, unearthed by the Fentons and brought to light by the Justice League.

The heroes who raided the base found multiple ghosts held captive, the most sickening thing being that the oldest ghost wasn't even 20, only being 18 years of age, when asked their age.

They opened up a room that was locked down tightly for some reason, perhaps a volatile experiment gone wrong or perhaps, another Conner situation. But no, all that was there were two Teddy Bears stuffed away in the corner, trying to make themselves even smaller than they already was in a desperate attempt to not be seen, when they hesitantly stepped in the room, one of them removed itself from the other one, spreading its arms out to either side of itself and standing in front of the other one protectively.

Its face shifted, as a mouth appeared. It bared its fangs and let out a low, animal-like growl as ice started to spread onto the ground from itself and a mist fell from its mouth.

===

Danny didn't know what the muffled sounds that managed to penetrate the wall meant, not what was causing them exactly. Maybe they caught a new ghost? He didn't know.

When a while later, did the door to their cell prison open, did Danny have a choice to make, one he didn't even need to think twice about. He may not know all of his powers correctly, nor know how to properly use them and he most likely wouldn't be able to do much damage.

But he wasn't about to let them hurt his new baby sister, sure, she may be a clone and they expected him to not like her. But he didn't care what they thought, if they think they could take her without a fight.

Well, they were dead wrong.

[minty-bunni]

AU where Danny doesn't have a pain tolerance, he just can't feel pain at all. This is much to the horror of literally everyone in Amity when he walks into school not even noticing an obviously broken limb or a huge gash.

[rainbow-beanie]

*breaks down door* WHAT’S UP PHANTOM!! I’m wondering if anyone has some headcanons about Danny’s ice powers, since the show had sadly been discontinued before we could find out anymore lore about the ghosts and their cores. Anything from funny headcanons, sad ones, or happy ones! any that either has something involving ice cores, or even headcanons about what ghost core danni has, since I’ve recently heard of a headcanon that she may have a water core, since the last time we saw her, she was melting cause something was wrong with either her ghost core, body, or maybe she was low on ectoplasm, and that’s why she was melting.

Basically anything revolving around ghost Biology, and how it could effect Danny since he’s a halfa. And speaking of halfa’s, y’all could even share any vlad headcanons that you have or heard of! Even though I have a feeling that phandom could be be a little split about liking him vs thinking he’s a scrunklely that desperately needs therapy (which may or may not be me. but that’s beside the point-) or both.

Like what was his life like after the accident that turned him into a halfa? Did he have anyone else that was there for him, that he either pushed away in his moment of grief from in his eyes loosing Jack and Maddie, his closest friends? Or did they leave him too, or had perished cause of vlad accidentally or purposely killing them in the time he was getting used to his powers?

*looks at vlad underneath a microscope* this little shit can fit so many theories and headcanons.

….I may or may have gotten carried away, but what I’m trying to say is that I’d like to hear any headcanons you have about these three, or halfa biology in general.

[fourphoenixfeathers]

fgjkfgjgf knowing crossovers are common is there a chance our Danny boy can meet the two other halfas? like dimension hopping in the ghost zone and all that? with the distortion world as another part of it? or is this just pokemon only-

Just pokemon sadly! At least for this au's canon. I think adding in characters from Danny Phantom would be a bit ambitious considering everything i have on my plate...

*stares intently at the pile of notes on my 6 aus*

*stares harder at my two jobs and incoming fall semester*

But it's fun to imagine. Like I said in my au masterpost, if you wanna go ham with an offshoot or even just a meme of my aus, that's completely fine with me.

[absolutely-esme]

My head canon for Plasmius

It looks like some people enjoyed my head canon about how Danny and Dani work, so I thought I would share my thoughts on why Vlad is so different from Danny.

If you didn't read my other post, the gist is that occupying the space where a portal is opening is not good for humans or ghosts, so in a desperate attempt at survival Danny's dying human body and forming ghost combined into one. As a result, his human and ghost halves grew together into a functional whole. The clones inherited this way of being but didn't have the materials to form the structure of their human halves because Vlad made them entirely out of ectoplasm and didn't feed them, so they started falling apart if they ran low on energy.

Vlad, on the other hand, was not inside of a portal when it turned on. He was hit in the face with a volatile mixture of energized ectoplasm and boiling soda (plus whatever weird substances might have resulted from a reaction between the two). This left him both injured and ill.

Vlad was slowly dying. His ghost was beginning to form, as they do. He was pretty close to dying and becoming a ghost normally. However, his ailing body found a way to utilize the ectoplasm in his system to adapt and survive by binding his forming ghost to it.

This process was not quick or neat because it was entirely one-sided. Vlad's forming ghost was totally fine by ghost standards and didn't feel any need to cling to the ailing mortal vessel it was preparing to leave behind.

Vlad's ghost half is more like a ghost whose human body is still stuck to him like a snake that can't quite get a shed skin to come off of the end of it's tail. His human half is desperately clinging to any resource that will let it keep itself alive a little longer. The halves fight each other more than they work together.

Where Danny's Human and ghost half both clung to each other for survival and adapted to accommodate and support each other, Vlad's human half was struggling to hold onto and make use of his uncompromising ghost half. It had to change a lot more and got a lot less out of it. That's why Vlad's ghost form looks so different and inhuman. That's why the appearance of his human form changed from before the accident.

Vlad would be a selfish, controlling jerk no matter what (we see this in the episode with the alternate timeline where Jack was the one caught in the accident), but he's more capricious and unpredictable as a halfa because he's constantly at war with himself, even if he's not consciously aware of it.

His ghost half wants to escape his human half and finish forming. His human half wants to keep his ghost half Trapped and exploit it. The two halves do not like, respect, or have empathy for each other because Vlad is a jerk. This means that he simultaneously has an ego the size of a continent and hates himself. This makes a volatile combination.

Vlad fixates on things that both sides of himself have strong feelings about.

His obsessions with Jack and Maddie are fairly one note. Both halves of him hate Jack. His human half blames him for his death/near death. His ghost half blames him for his entrapment. Vlad's creepy stalker crush on Maddie is the same either way because both halves are still Vlad.

His obsession with Danny is more complicated and volatile. His human half sees Danny's oneness within the self as proof that a ghost half can be more thoroughly dominated and wants that. His ghost half sees Danny as the potential source of another tool his human half can use against him and hates it. That's why Vlad's behavior toward Danny swings wildly from "join me, I can make it worth your while" to "I will destroy everything everything you hold dear."

Vlad and Danny may both be halfas, but they are not the same at all.

Danny is a healthy halfa with both halves seamlessly integrated into a complete and stable whole. There's no Ghost Danny and Human Danny; he's just Danny, who happens to be half human and half ghost.

That's why trying to separate his human and ghost halves with the ghost catcher went the way it did. Neither half acted like Danny or did as well at things because neither half on it's own was Danny. Each half was half of a person trying to do the job of a whole person.

I imagine there were health issues that couldn't be seen from an outside perspective building up as well. Little things inside Danny's human half's body that had adapted to rely on his ghost half for something or other building up. Danny's ghost half probably would have started melting like his clones without the structure of his human body to lean on if he'd used too much energy.

Danny's ghost half was quicker to pick up on the fact that he needed to put himself back together to restore functionality because Danny has never been a full ghost that didn't need a human half to function. He was able to look clearly at his current situation and realize "this isn't right," even with the reduced processing power from being only half of Danny.

Danny's human half was a little slower on the uptake because Danny has been a full human who didn't need anything ghostly to survive. He confused his current state as half of a human missing his ghost half with his memories of how big of a difference there was between being a halfa and being a whole human. He didn't quite have the processing power to realize what part of the assumption wasn't sitting right, even as he continued instinctively trying to lean on the missing half of himself.

Even so, both halves of himself at least subconsciously knew that they needed each other. Once Danny was back in one piece and whole once more, he destroyed the ghost catcher because, in his whole and healthy state, he understood that cutting himself in half like that was bad and should never happen again. I imagine that he remembers that period sort of like a fever dream: with lots of disjointed, vague nonsense floating in a cloud of discomfort.

Vlad, on the other hand, is a complete mess. His human half and ghost half are constantly duking it out in his subconscious. He's got all sorts of issues stemming from his two halves trying to live around/despite each other with no heed paid to the other half's needs. Neither half of him is healthy and the whole of him is not healthy.

If you used the ghost catcher to separate Vlad's human and ghost halves, they would fight. Vlad's ghost half would try to kill his human half and his human half would try to reclaim or enslave his ghost half. It would be brutal and vicious.

Part of the reason Danny develops powers so much faster than Vlad is because Danny is healthy. He learns and grows like a healthy young halfa should. Vlad on the other hand uses up so much energy on the internal struggle and damages himself so much with it that it stunts his growth. That's not the only reason, but it is part of it.

In a nutshell: Danny is one whole person who is half human and half ghost. Vlad is half of a ghost and half of a human stuck together in a manner not dissimilar to what would probably happen if someone shoved two grouchy feral cats into a sack and tied it shut.

[miscmonstro]

The Uno Reverse Adoption Saga 8

AO3 Link: here

First: Chapter 1

Previous: Chapter 7

Next: Chapter 9

Current Characters: Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, Danny Fenton, Jason Todd

Summary: Forced to attend a gala by her parents as she is every year, Sam Manson was resigned to suffer through the stifling three-night gala until something pulled at her core. The something turned out to be a someone. Just who is Jason Todd and can the trio gain enough of his trust to help him before his struggling proto-core collapses?

warnings: 1) the picture Jason sees at the end not super graphic but still it is of the trio's deaths. It starts at "Several states away" and as it's the last paragraph or so there is nothing after it. 2) you aren't supposed to do the psychology thing on friends/family, it's not ethical. Also Jazz's approach is not what a psychologist is supposed to do but… extenuating circumstances and fanficition.

👻 {Chapter 8 Below!)

“You didn’t eat anything.”

The trio were sitting at the small rickety table at Jason’s behest, and at the moment, the person in question was looking through the fridge. 

The half ghosts all shared a look. 

“We were tired. Went straight to sleep, pretty much,” Sam said. 

Tucker wished he had decided to sleep. He didn’t feel the consequences of his actions, not while in ghost form, but he knew the minute he turned human he’d be out like a light. 

He’d probably do that when he got home. If nothing else, sleep would disrupt the echoes of Jazz’s shrill tirade and worried questions still bouncing around his skull. Sam, who had dealt with Jazz last time and Danny, who couldn’t escape her worrying in any case, were not sympathetic. 

Feeling perturbed, Jason huffed and closed the fridge door with a little more force than necessary. 

“What’s up?” Tucker asked. 

“I’m sorry. I- fuck.” Jason ran a hand through his hair. He glanced to them. “I’m sorry. I have almost no food. I’ll have to run to the store.”

“I can do it,” Danny offered. He rose out of his seat and towards the door. “You should take a quick nap.”

Jason raised a brow.

“Don’t think the corner store takes ghost bucks, kid.”

Danny just smirked and let his transformation rings engulf him, leaving a human in place of the ghost. He dropped to the floor and pulled out his wallet. “I’ve got cash.”

Jason tensed for a moment, then let it go with a gusty exhale. “Phantom, Gotham isn’t safe. You’ll get mugged.”

“I can handle myself,” Danny replied. “And did you just dead name me?”

Sam groaned. Tucker did too and then let his head hit the table. 

“I- what?” Jason sputtered, doing a double take. 

Danny’s face split into a shit eating grin. “Because that’s my ghost name? My dead name? Get it?” 

“Get out of here,” Tucker complained, voice muffled by the wood.

Danny laughed and bolted out the door before Jason could muster a response. 

👻 {Boo!)

It wasn’t long before Danny returned with an armful of groceries, passing straight through the door as to not wake Jason, who Sam and Tucker had cajoled into “closing his eyes for ten minutes”. He handed the bags off to Tucker, who was the best at cooking of the three of them, and switched back into his ghost form. Tucker grumbled on principle but pulled out the contents of the bags. Sam floated over to help but he shooed her away.

“You’re going to throw out the bacon,” he sniffed.

Sam didn’t bother trying to deny it.

Danny wandered over to the couch as the two began to bicker. Jason was sitting with his arms crossed and head tilted to the side. His breathing was even and deep; peaceful and asleep. 

He didn’t want to leave Jason at the mercy of a random ghost. He wished they didn’t have to go back so soon. 

“It’ll be a miracle if your parents haven’t noticed,” Tucker said in response to the thought.

“Yeah well. It’ll be a miracle if your parents don’t ground you,” Danny replied. “You can’t be grounded on Christmas.” 

“I told them I was staying over at a friend’s. S’good as long as I get back before nine.”

Sam looked at the microwave and squinted. “What time zone is Gotham in again?”

“We’re an hour ahead here so it’s six back home,” said Danny, making his way to the kitchen. 

Amity time: six hours two minutes thirty seven seconds fourteen milliseconds, Tucker absently supplied as he flipped a hashbrown. 

Sam noted that they’d need to leave after breakfast as she wordlessly handed Danny a knife and a vague impression of apples. Seeing an opportunity to practice his telekinesis, Danny eyed the bag with the apples thoughtfully. 

“Do that on the other side,” Tucker instructed, turning his legs into a tail and sweeping the bag across the kitchen. In his mind’s eye he saw haywire apples raining down on his poor hashbrowns. Danny chuckled and obliged, sliding the bag farther and onto the edge of the carpet outside of the kitchen before he started practicing.

Sam rolled her eyes and pulled out a drawer to get another knife. The serrations on the blade were more dramatic and were probably not meant for fruit, but it would get the job done. Snatching the fruit Danny wasn’t using, she got to cutting them into little uneven pieces. 

Cooking breakfast after late night escapades had become a small tradition of theirs. It had started way back when Jazz had suggested they find a way to destress together their first year as halfas and had spiraled from there. They tended to overcook, though it had never been an issue; it had the bonus of feeding a very exhausted Jazz, producing leftovers for themselves and an extremely overworked Valerie, and now giving an obviously worn Jason some much needed fuel.

Tucker was a storm in the shape of a chef. He made scrambled eggs and bacon and hashbrowns and biscuit sandwiches. Eventually he did relent and let the other two near the stove. Danny made pancakes and Sam made breakfast potatoes.

(Tucker hadn’t always been an enthusiastic cook. It was something he started after the whole Duulaman thing.

Royalty didn’t cook.

It was a moot point anyway.) 

They set the table with the paper plates Danny had picked up when Sam realized the cabinets were mostly empty. Paper would degrade but plastic wouldn’t so Danny had resigned himself to making utensils out of his ice. Sam appreciated it. 

“Should we wake him?”

“Nah,” Tucker thought, “he was up all night. He needs the sleep.”

“He’s sleeping awfully well for someone hosting three ghosts,” Sam said.

“Oh. Maybe it’s a ghostling thing?”

Danny tuned in at the mention of ghostlings. “Ghm?”

The other two snorted. “Of course that gets your attention,” Sam dryly said.

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking… what if there is an emergency or something? I could give him my number, but even at top speed it’d take me a hot minute to get here from Amity. So, I think I should ask CW after the truce if he could send me back here.”

“Dude,” Tucker said first. “Maybe?”

He wasn’t confident. Don’t get him wrong- Clockwork was powerful, and he hadn’t steered them wrong, but the problem was that the solution was never obvious. He also didn’t trust the master of time to not add a few obstacles and side missions. He had before, and for no discernible reason.

Sam agreed. “I can’t change back anyway,” she said, mentally building up to what she was about to propose.

“So I guess… I can let him hold onto my camera.”

Danny almost froze the table in surprise. Tucker dropped the syrup and barely caught it.

“Sam?!” he exclaimed, slightly horrified.

Outwardly, she scoffed and seemed unperturbed. But they all shared a headspace; they couldn’t really hide from each other. The boys knew how disgusting the mere thought of parting with her camera felt.

“We’ll find a different way,” Danny said firmly.

“It’s fine.”

“Liar.”

Sam huffed and pulled the camera over her head. “I’ll feel it if he’s in trouble, and I can use it to get here in seconds, unlike you. Besides, it's not like I’m using it.” 

“Sam, you can’t just like… do that,” protested Tucker, clutching his PDA tight in one hand.

Her stubborn resolve was her answer. 

They stewed in silence for a bit. Danny tried and failed to think of a better solution and Tucker didn’t do any better.

“We should get Jason up,” he thought at last. “The food is getting cold.”

Danny more than happily began poking the sleeping man with the tip of his tail. Jason grunted and opened a bleary eye. 

“Breakfast,” Danny said.

“Yeah, in a minute,” Jason grumbled, standing slowly and stretching. 

Danny corralled their stumbling, half asleep host to the table. Jason only blinked as Danny all but sat him at the table. The lights were on, but nobody was home.

Tucker passed a plate of eggs. Over the next few minutes Jason became more alert.

“You kids made breakfast?” he asked, taking another spoon of eggs. “How long was I out?”

“Not long,” Tucker said. 

“Mmm.”

“Yeah. We have to hurry though. We need to head out soon,” Danny added, skewering his potatoes.

That got Jason’s attention. He sat up straighter and surveyed the three. “Where will you go?”

“Our haunt. We need to get back,” Sam explained. 

Jason paused. “Er… do I have a… haunt?”

“No, not yet. Don’t worry, once you grow up you’ll be strong enough to claim a haunt,” assured Danny.

Jason didn’t outwardly react but he didn’t seem to like the idea. 

“Our haunt’s Amity,” Tucker added. “Lots of ghosts trespass and try to defeat us since that’s where the portals are.”

It was a bit of a white lie. Ghosts no longer come to cause mischief so much as they came to challenge Danny. 

Sam picked up on what Tucker was trying to do- reassure Jason that his life wouldn’t be totally uprooted. “Haunts can be in the living world. They don’t have to be in the zone.”

That didn’t seem to reassure him.

Sam cleared her throat, which suddenly felt tight. 

“So,” she drawled, thankful she didn’t need to breathe like this and therefore her breath wouldn’t hitch, “we were thinking. A lot can go wrong in a day, never mind a few, and we do need to leave. So… here.” She thrust the camera at him with a little more force than necessary. The strap swung in an arc and almost knocked over the salt shaker. “This camera is a part of me. If you’re in danger, click the button on the top, the one that takes pictures on normal cameras. I’ll be here in a heartbeat.”

“Be careful with it,” Danny instructed as Jason gingerly took the spectral camera. “This is the ghostly equivalent of someone chopping off a hand and handing it to you, except we don’t lose our connection with severed body parts.”

Jason poked the camera. “You can feel that?”

Sam shrugged. “More or less.” 

Jason put the camera on the table. 

“Uh-uh,” Tucker said sternly. “That’s Mane’s camera. Keep it on you.”

Jason rolled his eyes and then lopped the camera around his neck.

It felt a lot less awful than they were expecting. Tucker once again chalked it up to Jason being an unclaimed orphan- he didn’t have much of a core to contest Sam’s essence.

They finished eating (read: watching Jason eat) and then the trio said a quick goodbye. If they didn’t move quickly then they might not end up moving at all.

Jason seemed alarmed by their insistence to bolt. 

“How are you kids even going to get back?” he asked pointedly. 

“We’ll just… get there. Fly, you know,” Danny said vaguely. 

Eventually they went invisible and moved to the guest room where they pulled out the map. Danny inhaled, found the nearest portal, linked arms with Tucker and Sam, and then they were off.

👻 {Boo!)

“Danny.”

“Danny.”

“Danny!”

“What?” Danny asked crankily. He’d spent far too much time in the zone preparing his lair for the truce party and Jason’s checkup. 

Jazz stuck her hands on her hips.

“You’re moping,” she accused. 

There was a crash from downstairs. Jack bellowed something about getting his trap operational before tomorrow.

Christmas.

Danny harrumphed and crossed his arms. 

Truthfully, Christmas wasn’t the only thing bothering him. Jazz, who had clearly picked up on this, gave him the snooty older sister look. As if she could read his mind she amended, “More than usual. What’s wrong?”

Well, Jazz always found out sooner rather than later. 

“I want to be a dad?”

His voice cracked as if to mock him and he winced.

“Oh Danny,” Jazz began, setting a hand on his shoulder, “wanting to be a parent is-“

“Wait,” he interrupted with a bout of irritation, ducking out from and under her arm. “I didn’t even finish Jazz.”

She made a ‘go on’ motion with her hands.

Danny sighed and began pacing.

“So, I’m almost an adult human but I’ve been an adult ghost. And there’s, uh, there’s a ghostling. Except he’s part human too? So I want to adopt him, all the ghost urges are there and they’re driving me insane. But like, at the same time he’s an adult man. He totally adults better than me. Like he’s gotta be in his thirties or something.”

“You sound worried,” Jazz pointed out with a poker face that might’ve fooled someone else. 

“Sam gave him her camera so we’d know if he was in trouble but not even two hours after we left, he took it off! For hours! Anything could’ve happened in that time.”

From Jazz’s expression, Danny knew she’d be psychoanalyzing that statement for a while. 

“And why does that matter?”

“Jazz-“

“Danny.”

“Ugh! It’s a ghost thing. Everyone will want to adopt him. But he obviously has a life and stuff, but if he wants his core to stabilize he needs a parent. He’s like, ghost skin and bones Jazz.”

Jazz frowned. “This has more to do with concepts of autonomy and enculturation… I don’t think eating disorders apply here.”

Danny grumbled and pivoted to cross the room again. 

There was a deep, rumbling boom and the house shook. 

“What do you think about being a parent?”

“I can’t let another ghost take him,” Danny said promptly. “They will forget to take care of his human needs. He needs someone who won’t be confused or forgetful of his human side.”

Jazz nodded. “Hm. Is he a halfa?”

Danny almost tripped. 

“No,” he denied vehemently. “He can’t be.”

“And you know that for sure?”

“Well… no.”

“Would it change anything if he was?”

Danny didn’t respond for three minutes. He never answered the question.

“So what’s the verdict?”

Jazz pinched the bridge of her nose. “Firstly, this is your reminder that this is unethical. Secondly, your obsession is mingling with your usual desire to help people. Because of their status being similar to yours, you feel responsible… this is on top of your regular ghost biology urging you. You’re afraid of what a human-ghost child implies and don’t want to think about it. You’re especially afraid of what a halfa child implies. So, is this something Vlad did?”

“We can’t discount it, but we’re not going to confront him about it either. Even if it’s something he did, we don’t want him to know we know. But… we talked it over. It’s unlikely with what we know right now.”

Which, admittedly, wasn’t much.

Jazz nodded. The sounds of bullets and blasters echoed, as did the cheerfully vengeful voice of their mother declaring the new system operational. 

“So, like, enculturation,” Danny said in response to a faint nudge from Sam, biting his lip. “Being a ghost is overwhelming.”

“Make a list of things you wish someone had told you at first,” Jazz suggested. “And maybe things that took you a while to get the hang of. And remember- children are naturally not going to be as capable as adults. They’re developing. That skill gap will be frustrating for someone who’s used to managing themselves.”

“A list?” Danny mused. Did they even have the original ghost idea list anymore?

“Think school subjects. History, biology, science, economy, government. The things that we learn in school are basically enculturation.”

“So ghost history, ghost biology, ghost science, ghost economy. Got it.”

“And ghost government.”

Danny rubbed his neck and avoided eye contact. 

“Danny,” Jazz said, voice laced with reprimand, “he knows you’re the king, right? You weren’t going to adopt a baby ghost and introduce him to the zone without planning to explain the governing bodies, right?”

“But Tucker hates being called a helpmate,” Danny blurted. 

Tucker, in fact, could not care less. 

Jazz looked at him flatly.

Danny hunched and glared at his sister. She glared right back and crossed her arms.

“Well, I think you ought to tell him but it is your decision. I just think it’s a stupid one.”

“Gee, thanks.” Danny rolled his eyes. “And I was gonna tell him, just… later.”

Jazz glared for a moment more and then relented. “Alright. An important part of parenthood is clear communication about important issues that can affect your family dynamic.”

Then they both cringed. 

(Danny was going to tell his parents… just not now.)

“Wait,” Danny said, the implication of her words finally registering, “you’re not going to talk me out of it?”

“Do I think it’s a good idea? No,” Jazz said bluntly. “But I think that the other option is far worse.”

👻 {Boo!)

On Christmas morning the three woke to an echoed itchiness originating from Sam.

That was not an uplifting omen.

“What the hell is he doing to my camera,” she hissed.

Danny reached for it through Sam and held still for a moment.

“… I think he’s looking through it.”

“That feels about right,” Tucker said.

“Huh,” Sam muttered. “Well, that won’t look bad at all. Nothing suspicious about a collection of carcasses.”

Sam’s camera, after the accident, had begun to only capture dead things. It was usually the thing that’d died most recently in the camera view but if Sam focused, she could narrow the parameters. They’d helped solve more than a few old cold cases by filtering the photographs for human remains.

Very unsuspicious. 

Tucker hissed. 

“I hope he doesn’t go look at all of them.”

The very first picture was the worst. 

All ghosts were sensitive to their deaths, even halfas. It was hard enough being in the lab sometimes, never mind looking at that accursed first picture.

Still, none of them had been able to convince themselves to delete it.

Several states away, Jason Todd looked down at the little camera display, the younger contorted and screaming face of Tucker’s flickering form in full view. In a tunnel behind him, just past a wave of green, Danny was suspended, back arched and face equally pained. Engulfed in dazzlingly bright energy, his mouth was stretched wide open. He was screaming too.

The hand, half dissolving as it reached toward the dying boys, could only have belonged to Sam. 

👻 {Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it.)

Taglist time! If you want to be added, just say so!

@depressed-bitchy-demon @dp-marvel94 @birbtails @mr-lancers-english-class @miraculousandmore @iglowinggemma28 @manapeer @azzysflowergarden @notwhat-i-seemtobe @whobee7 @trippingovermyfeet @stormhaven257 @imsociallyanxiousgetoverit @passivedecept @lovetheryu @ever-after-aaa @mysteriousooze @wegetitethan @cyber-geist @t-nayira @wisteriavines @starscreamlover @recently-diagnosed-lady-knight @thescarletcryptid @jaguarthecat @blankliferain

Next week: Amity! It's a nice place to live…

Jason POV :3

Next: Chapter 9

[emeraldsandamethyst]

obsessions (danny phantom)

i had a comment asking about obsessions on ao3 and am sharing it here, since i thought I'd made it obvious but obviously that is in my brain and y'all aren't in my brain

for reference this is the fic [on ao3 here] and the bits specific about ghosts having 'things' I'll put at the end under a cut

Q: In your ‘verse is the Box Ghost really strong, or just a masochist? Same with Technus? Because some ghosts seem really intrinsically tied to their thing and express it super openly.

A: So in this AU ghosts have a lot of choice in how to fulfill their obsessions.

Boxie doesn't have a box obsession specifically. I'm using the HC he died in a warehouse accident so his obsession is more related to protection and he satisfies it by keeping boxes away from everyone else.

Ghosts being deliberately vague with their language about 'things' both helps other ghosts by well, being vague, because they could say something like "oh yeah that's box Ghost, boxes are his thing" and ghosts all understand that's not literally his obsession because you just don't do that. And most Ghosts that didn't know him would understand that being known for boxes is what he wants. Both from his name and how the ghost talking about him said it was his thing.

Like "being a hero is Phantom's thing" no ghost would think his obsession is heroism (it isn't in this au anyways) if a ghost said that. If a human said that they'd be pissed but only because they know humans don't respect obsessions and it's possible that they are actually sharing it.

Does that make sense?

[...]

“Oh! Yeah, sure. Like I said, if you read any of [Jack and Maddie's] conclusions from before about last year just try and toss that out. They’ve learned a lot more about ghosts since then that really changes the entire field of ectobiology. And I dunno if they’ve published anything about ghost forms since then, actually but, yeah, ghosts only sort of control their forms unless it's like, their thing-”

“Their Obsession, you mean?” Valerie asked. Danny paused a little too long and looked at her a little too sharply to convince Valerie of his full humanity.

“You could say it like that. But it’s rude,” Danny finally said, succeeding in looking and sounding fully human at least. As Phantom she’d seen just how pissed being asked about any ghosts obsession made him. She’d only asked him about his own once. That had been… probably the only time Danny had legitimately tried to hurt her, now that she thought about it.

[...]

“So,” Valerie said, not commenting on the sudden awkward tension, “Ghosts can’t change their bodies at will, usually, unless it’s their special thing.”

“Right!” Danny said with a happy nod of agreement.[...]

“And if a ghost suddenly does change their form, then there has been a huge change with them on a deeply personal level,” Valerie stated, [...]

“Yeah, pretty much!” Danny agreed.

“I’ve told you this isn’t safe,” she reminded him, exasperated. It was… it wasn’t nice actually. It was frustrating in a bad way. That electric place behind her heart that was usually so light felt heavy, almost like something was grinding against it.

“What do you care?” Danny hissed, leaving his tongue sticking out and slinking deeper into his coiled tail.

Valerie felt something actually painful in her chest and embarrassingly felt herself chirp for no reason she understood. Danny floated up towards her immediately, looking alarmed and contrite.

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry,” Danny said, distressed. “I never thought about what your thing might be, honest!”

“... Whatever,” Valerie said. She swallowed and remembered their conversation the other day. About ghosts having ‘things’ that under no circumstances should ever be mentioned and definitely not called Obsessions. Valerie hadn’t died. She couldn’t be a ghost. “I’m not…”

“Of course! Of course,” Danny said, fidgeting with the tip of his tail anxiously. Was this really that serious of a deal? Did… did ghosts feel even worse when someone brought up their Obsessions? Even indirectly? Maybe it was a bigger deal than she’d ever realized.

[catpriciousmarjara]

DP X DC: Dani Does Things and Leaves, Explains Nothing

Heavily inspired by this dp x dc prompt and the comments and reblogs under it:

Please go check it out and @stealingyourbones entire page. They have some great dp x dc content and meta.

Local Ghost Princess Decides to Help Out Fellow Clone, Leaves Chaos Behind, Heroes Left Concerned and Very Confused, More at 10.

Now Dani knew that this world had superheroes. She knew they had an organization of sorts that had a hate-hate relationship with various government entities and a love-hate relationship with the public, depending on who you asked. However she had no intention of being involved with them. She was on vacation after all. Besides this world was just a stopover anyway. Why bother when she wasn't here on official business? But it seemed that while she didn't want anything to do with the heroes, they, however inadvertently, wanted something to do with her. How else will you explain one of the worst cloning results she had ever seen crash into a tree right in front of her while she was enjoying a nice cup of litchi boba tea in the park?

The botched clone job slid down the branches and hit the ground with a thud. She raised an eyebrow at the the rampant malevolent magical lines running through the body exacerbating the overall instability of the clone's anatomy. Clearly this individual had run into an irate mage who cast some sort of destabilizing curse and shot them right out of the sky. Dani was thankful this was an isolated section of the park and that she had put a rudimentary avoidance ward over the area. Otherwise, a superhero crashing into a tree would've caused quite the ruckus and interrupted her boba time.

She took a sip of her boba and crouched down to examine the conked out hero. This one was the one they called Superboy wasn't he? She grimaced at the state of his engineering. Whoever did his cloning did not know what they were dealing with. Her own cloning went better and she was ectoplasmic goop half the time. And Vlad was dealing with halfa DNA! Probably the most complicated genetic material in existence. Superboy over here was constructed from actual tangible genetic sources and yet...ugh.

Honestly speaking beings of this plane probably wouldn't have noticed anything wrong. A level down in power scale compared to the individual who acted as genetic donor, most likely that Superman guy, and random instances of destabilization would most likely be the extend of their knowledge regarding their faulty cloning. And when those instances of instability gradually ironed themselves out they probably patted themselves on the back and thought all was well. She should cut them some slack.

Dani hummed as she chewed on her boba pearls. Unfortunately she wasn't known to be the most merciful when it came to ensuring the well-being of clones.

Suckers probably didn't pick up the fact they unleashed a possible catastrophe upon their world. Superboy was obviously fashioned from Kryptonian DNA. A species known for becoming near godlike upon absorbing solar energy from a yellow sun. That means that their bodies have mechanisms at play beyond simple biology. Specifically energy pathways and an energy processing core. Superboy wasn't a level down in power from Superman because of some biological imperfection, he was weaker because of flawed energy absorption and storage. And that meant that his energy core was unbalanced, and once it reached a particular threshold...well its gonna be a spectacular light show this side of the galaxy that's for sure. Of course it was just a possibility. There was no guarantee he would reach that threshold in his lifetime. Unless he ran into a white mage who was vicious enough to cast a juiced up imbalance curse that is. And what do you know! Turns out you can organically be that unlucky!

She put down her cup and ran a simple diagnostics. Sure enough the magic had intensified the issue. This man needed help, the kind of help that wasn't usually available in this part of the omniverse. But she just so happened to pass by and just so happened to have expertise in this field so today was somehow simultaneously Superboy's lucky and unlucky day. He really was going through it.

As to why she would interfere that's easy. She was the Guardian of Cloned Beings after all. She can't have a fellow clone suffer could she? And plus, what were the chances that he would end up like this right in front of one of the only beings that would know how to fix the issue? Dani grinned in glee. Truly the laws of causality worked in intriguing ways.

She stood up and let her talons manifest, plucking the strings of SuperboyConnerKon-el's make and striking them one by one in the tune of an old Krytonian melody. Shame what happened to them really, but all things had their fate. It truly was great to see some of them survive and make a home elsewhere. Dani wished them the best.

As she worked, untangling knots, and straightening out blockages, the hero finally began to stir. His eyes opened and they were understandably unfocused. Disoriented and confused, he looked kinda like a bamboozled Cujo and Dani felt her lips twitch up in a toothy smile. For some reason that seemed to startle him. She mentally frowned. Did he expect her not to smile at him? That would've been rude of her. Dani might be a gremlin but she was never impolite.

"I'm just about done with the curse", she told him. "Leaching out the corrosive magic was easy but I need to repair your energy coils and that's tricky. Don't worry though. Everything's on the house. Always did have a soft spot for the House of El ever since my aunt married into it for a short while."

Dani pulled a particularly stubborn power node open. "I would like your permission before doing that through. Body autonomy, informed decisions and and all! So yes or no? You'd detonate like a bomb if I didn't though."

The young hero's eyes widened. He still didn't seem to know what was going on so she hit him with a short term clarity spell. And a small information spell to cover her bases. That got him to gather his wits enough and she watched as he processed the influx of information. His complexion was ashen when he got through the bundle and he finally managed a shaky nod. Good enough.

Dani smiled at the Kryptonian. "Great! Now this would take like twenty minutes give or take five. You can sleep now." She promptly knocked him out cold and cancelled the spells so as to not overload his brain.

And just as she predicted, twenty minutes later, she plucked the last string with a flick of her wrist and surveyed her handiwork. Exemplary if she said so herself. One of her best work! Cheerfully she shot an awakening spell at Kon-el and crouched down again, patting his head.

"You might need to be careful for a few days while your body adjusts to its new energy capacity and conductivity. Your overall system has been optimized as well so be careful", she told the groggy young man.

She paused. "And don't worry. I didn't access your mind. This was all strictly physical repair aimed at preventing you from exploding like a supernova and taking the planet with you."

And once again that part made his eyes widen. Good. He truly understood the urgency. Or that could just be him being loopy after solar energy overload. It was a bright, sunny day after all.

She stood up, creating a portal to the next world on her itinerary. She looked back at the most likely high as a kite Kryptonian. "You kinda owe me for all that extra work hero! I might just come to collect one of these days!", she joked as the portal swallowed her body and she was lost to the spaces between spaces.

She'd already told him it was all on the house so Dani didn't think that anyone would take that last part seriously. However she forgot the fact that one Conner Kent was in her own words 'high as a kite' and hence might miss some crucial details.

She also forgot to leave behind an explanation packet.

And thus she was utterly unaware of the chaos she left in her wake, happily traveling through the multiverse.

..............................................................................................................................

"So you're telling me that not only did someone find me when I was out cold and get rid of the spell, but they also rearranged my guts and gave me an upgrade?"

"...Yeah."

"What the fuck?"

..............................................................................................................................

"Conner, do you remember anything? Anything at all? Whatever they did required some serious magical power. We don't know why they did it or how. For all we know they could've done something dangerous that we can't detect yet."

"Litchi boba tea".

"Kon what the hell?"

..............................................................................................................................

"...Its in bits and pieces...but I'm pretty sure there was a woman?...white hair, green eyes...something something on the house...something about an aunt and the House of El?...and there was this strange white symbol on her chest and this really soft music was playing that went something like this...(confused humming noises)...and something about me owing her?"

"Kara? Why are you looking at me like that? What's wrong?"

..............................................................................................................................

"Let me get this straight, Superboy was healed by the Kryptonian primordial goddess of portals, messengers, travelers and other such domains, and not only did she save him but also gave him a tune up? And explicitly said that he owes her now? And this powerful divine being, who is also supposed to be the daughter of Krypton's Death God according to legends mind you, is most likely still on earth with motives unknown? Plus your entire House is descended from her family?"

"...Yeah that about sums it up."

"..."

..............................................................................................................................

"Oh man why did this happen just when I was going to go on vacation? Why couldn't the Death God or whatever reschedule?"

"Death gods notoriously don't reschedule, they're death gods. Also she's the daughter of a death god, not one herself. Most death gods are also famously fair. If not fair by our standards, fair by theirs".

"...That's good to know?"

"I confess I don't know about the fairness of children of death gods however".

"...great. Thanks anyway J'onn".

"You're welcome".

..............................................................................................................................

"You okay there man? Someone just rifled through your body and did who knows what...that's gotta be terrifying. You want to talk? We're all here for you, you know that right?"

" Thanks guys. And yeah it was freaky. But apparently I would've exploded and blown up the planet with me if she didn't do that so I guess I'm more grateful than scared."

"...Explode and blown up the what now?"

..............................................................................................................................

"Is there anything more we should know about Clark?"

"Legends say she has a brother and he's associated with great calamities?"

"...."

"Bruce? You alright?"

..............................................................................................................................

DPXDC refuses to be done with me. Leave me be accursed crossover! Leave me be!

(Btw Kon didn't make the connection because he was really out of it, and not because Clark and Kara didn't introduce him to Kryptonian culture.)

Thoughts and suggestions are welcome!