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ladylynse · 5 years

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Forewarning: [FF | AO3] All Dipper knew was that there was something buried in some special thermos behind the shack; all Danny knew was that he had no idea how he'd gotten here.

Inspired by this beautiful piece of fanart by @hashtag-art, who very kindly gave me permission to write this fic. This story is also for @bibliophileap. Happy birthday!

“The book mentioned there might be something stuck in some special thermos that’s buried just behind the shack,” Dipper explained as he sank the spade into the ground again.

Mabel eyed him, unimpressed, and made no move to pick up the trowel that rested a few feet from where Dipper stood. “What else did the book say?” It lay open at his feet, but she couldn’t make out anything from where she sat.

Dipper tossed the dirt aside and looked guilty. “I’m not sure.”

“You didn’t read it?”

“No, I read it. I just couldn’t make it out.”

“So the page had water damage or something?”

Dipper shook his head. “It wasn’t in English.”

“So—?”

“It’s in some kind of code or made up language.” Dipper stepped on the spade, widening his hole. “I can’t crack it. Or translate it. And I don’t exactly want to ask for help.”

He didn’t know who they could trust. He’d always been more suspicious than her, but their adventures this summer just seemed to cement his conviction that his suspicions were valid. Personally, she still thought he was a bit crazy, but he was her brother; that was expected.

“Not a cipher you know, huh?” mused Mabel as Dipper continued his work. “Even after you went through that code book two years ago? Impressive, bro-bro. This author of the journals must be good.”

“It’s the only page coded this way, though. That’s what I don’t get. There’s text hidden on other pages, but nothing else is the same as this.”

“Then maybe—” Mabel broke off as she heard Dipper’s spade hit something. He dropped to his knees to paw at the loosened dirt, and she crawled forward to see what he’d found. Buried treasure, maybe?

Except it wasn’t treasure; she could see that now. It was metal, dulled from its time in the earth, but it didn’t look like anything valuable. Even as Dipper worked to scrape the dirt away, it…. It really did look like an old thermos someone had forgotten about.

“What’s supposed to be inside again?” Mabel asked slowly.

“That’s the part I can’t translate.”

Bright, lurid green peeked out from beneath the dirt now, along with…buttons? Not just any old thermos, then, though she had no idea how it was supposed to be special. Mabel met Dipper’s eyes, and he bit his lip as he reached for the lid.

He couldn’t get it loose until she held the thermos in place while he turned with both hands, and then it came off with a pop. They both pulled back as smoke—vapour—something—began to swirl out of the thermos.

Genie? Mabel mouthed, hoping to catch Dipper’s eye, but he was too focused on the churning mist. It was beginning to form a humanoid shape now. She watched in silence, wondering if they were about to get three wishes—or some less pleasant surprise.

The vapour thickened, darkening in some places and lightening in others until the figure—the boy? Genie? Ghost?—almost looked solid.

And then he fell to his hands and knees with a very solid thud and let out a groan. Mabel would have shrieked if Dipper’s hand wasn’t suddenly covering her mouth; she hadn’t even realized he’d moved beside her, though she wasn’t surprised to see he’d grabbed the journal, too. She nodded slightly, and his hand dropped.

The boy had his back to them; he might not even have seen them. All she could see now was a shock of white hair and his weird black and white suit—not entirely unlike what Blendin had worn, though it looked to be made out of a different material.

“Aw, crud, how long was I in there this time?” The boy—whatever else he was, he was definitely a boy—climbed unsteadily to his feet. And then he stopped, looked around, and turned.

Saw the Mystery Shack.

Saw them gawking at him.

“Uh….” Bright green eyes blinked. “You’re, um, not who I thought you’d be.” He looked down and saw the empty thermos that had been his prison. He bent to scoop up the lid Dipper had dropped, and even though the thermos itself was still partially buried in the ground, he had no trouble pulling it out. He had barely touched it before it was free and clean of dirt to boot.

He must have noticed that they hadn’t moved, because he shot them a smile as he screwed the lid back onto the thermos. “You’ve, ah, probably guessed this, but I’m Phantom.”

“Ghost,” Dipper muttered.

Phantom frowned. “It’s Danny Phantom, actually,” he said slowly, “which is clearly not ringing bells with either of you. Um, where exactly am I? I don’t remember any Mystery Shack thing around Amity Park.”

Mabel glanced at Dipper, but he didn’t seem to know the name, either. He also wasn’t making any weird facial expressions to convey that she shouldn’t answer, so she said, “We’re in Gravity Falls.”

He scratched his head. “Is that in Wisconsin?”

“Oregon,” Dipper answered, narrowing his eyes.

“How did I wind up in Oregon?” Phantom—Danny?—asked, though he didn’t seem to expect an answer out of them. “Does Vlad have another cabin out here or something? Do you guys know Vlad Masters? Or have you heard of him?”

They shook their heads.

“But….” He looked at the thermos again. At the hole in the ground. The shovel, the trowel, even the journal under Dipper’s arm. “If you guys don’t know about Vlad, why…? How did I get there? How did you find me? Were you even looking for me?” He took a step back, then another, and then he just…vanished.

“Maybe he’s a friendly ghost?” Mabel offered when he didn’t reappear.

“He’s in the journal. In code. He can’t be that friendly.”

XXXXXXX

Danny couldn’t remember what had happened, and that’s what scared him the most. He’d been caught in a Fenton Thermos before, loads of times, but he usually remembered it happen. Plenty of those times he’d been caught by Jazz, accidentally or on purpose, or by one of his friends, or he’d been caught unawares in a fight, and then he at least remembered there being a fight, but this time….

This time, everything was muddled.

Nothing about this place seemed familiar from the air. He wasn’t far from a town (not Amity Park, not Elmerton, not anywhere he remembered travelling to with his parents), so he checked it out in case the kids had been lying to him. They didn’t trust him, maybe because they weren’t used to ghosts or maybe because they’d only heard horror stories. He couldn’t really blame them for that. Most people didn’t grow up with ghost-obsessed parents.

Unfortunately, the girl had been telling the truth. This place was Gravity Falls, which no doubt meant it was in Oregon, which meant he had absolutely no idea how he’d gotten here.

Danny settled on a large bough of a maple tree just outside of town and pulled the Fenton Thermos from his pocket. It was in good condition—better condition than the one he usually carried, assuming he remembered to bring it with him. But this thermos was also almost dead, the display barely visible in the daylight, and his presence inside of it was probably the only reason it had lasted this long. If he didn’t recharge it, it wouldn’t be good for anything but soup.

“Why am I here?” Danny whispered. The thermos had been buried. Vlad had no reason to do that to him. If he’d just wanted him out of the way, sure, but not when he still wanted Danny as a son—or, at the absolute very least, a mentee.

He had to be missing something. There must be some clue, somewhere, and if he could just find it—

But there was no way those kids were going to trust him, even if he went back to them for help. He’d seen how they’d looked at him. It wasn’t just them being scared; they’d been wary, too. Maybe they’d run into ghosts before after all. He knew as well as anyone how many unsavoury ghosts were out there. Not everyone was nice once you got to know them.

He might get further with them if he pretended to be normal. He could tell the truth once he knew they wouldn’t try to exorcise him or something. But in case they had run into other ghosts….

Danny concentrated, letting some of his power seep into the thermos to recharge it. He’d rather risk ending up inside the thing again than not having it when he needed it. If he kept it with his suit, he could get it when he needed it and wouldn’t arouse suspicion by carrying it around as Fenton.

Light flared around the thermos and died away, and he flew back down to the ground. The Mystery Shack wasn’t far from town, and given the number of signs nailed to trees around here, it wouldn’t be hard to find on foot. And if it took a bit of time for him to get there, well, that was probably a good thing. Showing up immediately after Phantom had wasn’t going to win him any favours.

Too bad he’d already told them his name was Danny.

XXXXX

Dipper tapped the page of the journal. “He said he was a phantom.”

Springs creaked as Mabel crawled onto his bed behind him to read the description over his shoulder. “He was in black and white,” she pointed out, “and seemed more preoccupied with this Vlad Masters guy than causing pain.”

“That’s because we didn’t summon him. We just released him. Which means we need to catch him again before he tricks anyone into actually summoning him.”

It would take more than a mirror to stop him; Dipper was certain of that much. Of course, the journal was a little vague when it came to the best way to stopping phantoms, but if that thermos thing had contained it for this long, it would work again. Of course, that required him to get the thermos back, and the phantom had taken it. And he wouldn’t have the opportunity to get it back until he found the phantom again.

The easiest way to do that would be to summon it, but Dipper wasn’t going to play into Phantom’s hands. He knew how dangerous ghosts could be, and he wasn’t going to underestimate this one. Especially when it had gotten its own page in the journal.

Well.

Page was a bit of an exaggeration. It was more a small section of a page, mixed in with a collection of other eclectic notes, which was why he’d gone digging in the first place. The author of the journal hadn’t steered him wrong before, and he was surprised the ‘special thermos’ had contained something so dangerous. And why would there be words of code on the page that didn’t match the code used in the rest of the journal? It didn’t make sense.

He’d been hoping for something helpful, some clue about the author, not…this.

“How are we supposed to catch him without summoning him ourselves?”

“He might come back since he knows we’re here. He might think we’re easy prey, being kids.”

Mabel hummed in consideration. “Well, if he doesn’t, I guess it’s not the first time we’ve had to summon a ghost.”

“I’m not summoning him. That’s the one thing the book says not to do, Mabel. I’ll just figure out how to exorcise him without summoning him.”

Mabel huffed. “Why did you let him out again?”

Dipper knew better than to answer that, so he ignored her, and she eventually got bored and headed downstairs to visit with Soos and Wendy in the shop.

He went back to searching the journal for answers it didn’t want to give, trying more variations of common and not-so-common ciphers on the coded message that must relate to the phantom. He didn’t think it would be a way to defeat Phantom—the author of the journals would have had no reason to put that in code—but it had to be important. It had to be. If he could just—

“Dipper! Get your butt down here!”

Dipper groaned as Mabel’s yell interrupted his train of thought and he lost track of it completely. Worse still, a glance at the clock confirmed that she hadn’t been gone that long. He closed the book and shoved it into his backpack to hide it; he planned on stuffing more ghost-hunting provisions into the bag anyway.

He slung the backpack over one shoulder and headed down the stairs. Mabel was waiting for him by the door between the shop and the private quarters of the house. Soos was out of the room, maybe showing someone around, maybe helping Grunkle Stan with something, and Wendy was talking to some kid at the counter.

Mabel jerked her head towards the boy and raised her eyebrows.

He gave her an appropriately confused look in return.

She stuck out her tongue in annoyance—real or mock, Dipper wasn’t even sure—and turned around. “Hey, Danny, this is my brother, Dipper.”

The boy turned, and Dipper blinked.

The resemblance between the boy and Phantom was uncanny.

And considering they both went by Danny….

“Hey,” Danny said, smiling and raising one hand in an acknowledging wave. “I ditched my parents in town. Wanted to get away from them before they did something embarrassing, which usually happens within five minutes of arriving anywhere.” He glanced around. “Does this place live up to its name?”

“Pay up and judge for yourself.” Wendy popped her gum and leaned forward. “Assuming you make it out alive. Some pretty creepy things have happened here, you know.”

Dipper knew exactly how much truth there was in Wendy’s words, but he hadn’t expected this Danny guy to look so thoughtful.

Danny pulled some change out of his pocket and frowned at it. “Not sure I brought enough with me,” he said. Dipper squinted, but the money looked real enough from where he stood, and it—and Danny’s speech patterns—weren’t super old or anything like that.

He wasn’t about to write off Danny’s similarity to Phantom as a coincidence, though.

Not after everything else he’d learned was true this summer.

Especially when it felt like he’d just barely scratched the surface.

Besides, if Phantom could impersonate a human, maybe that’s what the coded message said. And maybe he wasn’t really a phantom after all if he could do that; he might just be pretending to be a phantom. Maybe he wasn’t even really a ghost. Mabel was right; the description wasn’t perfect, and the entries in the journal were meticulous. Dipper couldn’t imagine the author getting something like this wrong.

But if this Danny was dangerous, maybe the author hadn’t studied him long enough before hiding him away.

Except…. If the author had known he was dangerous, they’d have said that. They wouldn’t have put any warning in a code that couldn’t be broken. Maybe the author hadn’t known what Phantom really was. Maybe they hadn’t even known what the thermos contained.

But if they hadn’t, who had told them about the special thermos in the first place? And why wouldn’t the author have just dug behind the shack like Dipper had to find out? The book was full of other instances where the author had gone searching for something to satisfy their curiosity.

Dipper didn’t notice that Mabel had offered to cover the difference in Danny’s admission fee until she was handing money to Wendy, and by then it was too late to protest—or prove—that Mabel’s money was most likely his, just ‘borrowed’. He wondered if she’d asked him when he’d been too busy to notice or just informed him when he’d been too busy to notice.

Mabel grabbed Danny’s hand and pulled him towards the entrance, but she shot a look at him over her shoulder, and Dipper realized she was trying to buy him time.

He just didn’t know what to do with it. He didn’t know what Phantom was, what Danny was, didn’t know if it really was a coincidence that he looked like Phantom and shared a name and happened to be visiting Gravity Falls just then (though all of that was why Dipper didn’t think it mere coincidence). And he didn’t know how he could find out. If Danny had given a last name, Mabel hadn’t told him, so he couldn’t even run into town to see if Danny’s story held water.

Wendy raised her eyebrows at him. “Are you just going to stand there or are you going to go in with them?”

Dipper hesitated, but he hadn’t told Wendy everything yet, and he didn’t want to start with this mystery in the journal. “I’ll catch up with them in a bit.”

Wendy smirked. “Giving Mabel some time alone with her new target?”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Dipper said. He’d been less enthused by Mabel’s rotating—and, more to the point, highly questionable—boyfriends so far. He was pretty sure some maybe-phantom wouldn’t be on her list, but there were some things he really didn’t understand about his sister, and that was one of them. Hopefully Danny didn’t turn out to be a vampire. That would really take the cake. Although he had never heard any lore about vampires turning into mist, so….

He had to figure this out. Mabel thought the same thing he did—that Danny and Phantom were connected somehow—or she wouldn’t have called him down in the first place. She’d let him know whatever Danny said to her, so there was no point in eavesdropping, but he couldn’t possibly dig up something on Danny in such a short period of time, and they’d already looked for any trace Phantom might have left behind.

The only thing Dipper could think of doing right now was to test his theory that Danny and Phantom were connected, but the only way he could think of doing that—

He was going to regret this.

“If Mabel asks, I’m upstairs,” he told Wendy, but Mabel wouldn’t ask, because Mabel would know. Mabel had probably come to this conclusion the moment she’d seen Danny, and her distracting him by taking him on a tour had been her way of telling Dipper that all this stuff was more his territory than hers.

He’d have to try summoning Phantom—and face whatever consequences came with that.

XXXXX

There was something wrong here, but Danny couldn’t figure out what it was. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but it slowly became harder and harder to listen to Mabel as she excitedly pointed out one exhibit or another. He knew at a glance that most things were fake, but some of the others—

Danny shivered, but he couldn’t shake this feeling he had, and now he wasn’t sure if it was wrongness at all; now it felt like there was somewhere he needed to be, something he needed to find, something, something, something—

Maybe this was why he was here? If it wasn’t Vlad, it had to be something. Heck, even if it was Vlad, Vlad wouldn’t be above trying to use him to get something, though Danny had no idea what that something might be. Or how to avoid playing right into Vlad’s hands.

Maybe he should just try to go home. He didn’t need to stay here. He could head into town. Buy a map—or at least look at one, since he was out of money. Or phone Jazz or Sam and Tucker to come and pick him up in the Spectre Speeder or even the Fenton Jet. How long had he been gone? It was still summer, but that didn’t tell him if it had been a day or a week, and if it was a week, Jazz would be frantic, especially if Sam and Tucker weren’t able to fill her in on whatever had happened, and whatever excuse they’d told his parents would be coming apart and—

Danny felt in his pocket, found his phone, and pulled it out. It was dead. Again. He really needed to start carrying a charger….

He looked up to see Mabel staring at him. He didn’t know if she’d asked him a question or if she’d just noticed that he wasn’t paying attention to her.

“Do you guys have a phone I can use?” he asked. It wasn’t tactful—he would’ve had to have been paying closer attention to Mabel’s one-sided conversation to figure out how to best slip in a question like that—but for some reason, it was hard to concentrate, and— “I was supposed to meet up with my sister.” He was rambling now, lies mixing with truth. “She’s going to freak if she thinks I got lost. It’ll be long distance, though. Is that okay?” He couldn’t offer to pay, not when he’d used the last of his change to get into this tourist trap.

Mabel blinked in surprise but nodded. “Just don’t tell Grunkle Stan,” she said, even though he had no idea who that was. She led him through another door half-hidden behind a stuffed jackalope, into a hallway, and through to the kitchen. She pointed to a phone mounted on the wall.

“Thanks,” he said. He knew a handful of numbers by heart, and Jazz’s cell phone was one of them. He’d call her first—she could deal with their parents and tell Sam and Tucker and figure out a plan to get him home—and then—

“We’re sorry; you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.”

“I…must’ve misdialled,” Danny said slowly, hanging up before trying again. He’d thought—

“We’re sorry; you have reached—”

No.

He knew that was Jazz’s number. He knew it, and he definitely hadn’t gotten it wrong the second time.

He dialled it a third time anyway.

“We’re sorry—”

Danny slammed the phone back onto its hook. He couldn’t even pretend it was something wrong with the line. This phone wasn’t cordless, even though he could see the cradle for a cordless phone on the opposite counter. Whatever this was, it wasn’t just some power outage somewhere. Back home, he’d suspect Technus was planning something, but here….

“Her phone must be dead, too,” Danny heard himself say. “I…I should go. See if I can find her. Or my parents. I didn’t exactly tell anyone where I was going.” Truth in his lies again. “They’re going to be wondering where I am. They won’t know I followed the signs for this place. They won’t be looking for me here.”

Mabel said something, but he wasn’t listening to her. He just needed to go, to find out what had happened, to get a hold of Jazz or Sam or Tucker or anyone—

He wasn’t sure he remembered to say goodbye before he went out the kitchen door and started running for the path in the woods.

He was sure to wait until the path twisted and the trees closed off behind him, hiding him from the shack and anyone who might’ve been watching, and then he transformed, and then—

Something grabbed him, pulled, and Danny screamed.

XXXXXX

Mabel heard the cry from upstairs. It wasn’t Dipper’s, but she told Wendy it was, told her that Dipper was just surprised, and waved her off as she took the stairs two at a time. Dipper was sitting on their bedroom floor with the journal. He’d shoved the rug and a few stray clothes and balls of yarn aside and drawn a circle in the middle of the floor with chalk. A few candles burned even though sunlight still streamed in from the window.

Floating in the circle, breathing hard, was Phantom.

She didn’t break eye contact with him when he met her gaze. She didn’t know if she could. “Dipper?”

“It took a while.” His voice was hoarse. “Longer than it should’ve.”

Phantom stared. Looked down at the circle. Looked back at them. “Did….” He stopped. Licked his lips. Swallowed. “Did one of you make a wish?”

Neither of them answered. The journal had warned that phantoms would cause pain to those who summoned them, would trick people into thinking they’d summoned them, but the details were too scarce for her liking. And what she’d seen with Danny hadn’t convinced her that the book had everything right, at least in Phantom’s case.

“This was magic,” Phantom said. “It…it has to be magic.” He pointed at the journal. “Is that a spell book or something?”

He looked around when he was met with silence, but he didn’t leave the circle.

“Maybe you should just exorcise him,” Mabel whispered, but Phantom heard her.

He spun around, green eyes wide with panic. “No! Seriously, please, don’t. You can’t. I don’t even want to know what—” He broke off. Shook his head. “This has to be Desiree, right? Somebody made a wish. Back home, maybe. Or maybe this isn’t even real. I don’t know. But this…. It’s powerful. And I wouldn’t be dreaming something like this. It’s gotta be Desiree. I have to stop her. You have to let me go.”

He was trapped, then. Dipper had gotten it right. Not that she’d ever thought he might have gotten it wrong. It was Dipper. He was good at this kind of thing. Better than she’d ever be.

“Please.” He was looking between them now, floating as close to the edge of the circle as he could, his feet only inches above the floor. “If Desiree is here, that’s not good, and you rea—”

Mabel didn’t think she’d blinked, but now Phantom was sitting in the middle of the circle, crossed-legged, his head in his hands.

Mabel heard Dipper’s sharp inhale and knew he’d seen it, too. Whatever it was.

Phantom finally spoke without lifting his head. “If you stay on this road,” he mumbled, “you’ll find yourself on a path you can’t turn away from.” He looked up then, scowling, and added, “Apparently, I’m supposed to warn you, because someone decided I make a good poster boy for interdimensional safety and the consequences of the lack thereof.”

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