#idiot cheesehead archenemy

[raaorqtpbpdy]

The Boy Who Knew Too Much

Wes finds out something he shouldn't have about the mayor, and goes to Danny for help before he's forced to face the fatal consequences of knowing too much

For the prompts: Wes, in his investigations, inadvertently made the connection between Vlad Masters and Plasmius. Things take a bad turn as a result, and Danny finds himself regrettably awoken to mediate for Wes' safety. [from @schrodingersfic], and The events in this story are not presented in chronological order [from @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy]

Read also on AO3

[warning for death threats]

This was not how Danny wanted to be woken up in the morning. In fact, on a Saturday, Danny didn't want to be woken up in the morning at all. A good Saturday was a Saturday where Danny could sleep until one pm undisturbed. Fucking Wes obviously didn't get the memo.

"Danny, I need your help," Wes all but shouted, clambering through Danny's bedroom window at the ungodly hour of eleven am on a Saturday. "Your nemesis is trying to kill me."

"Oh, what?" Danny groaned, his voice dripping with annoyance. He was half asleep, and even he could hear it, loud and clear. "What did you do this time?"

"Nothing!" Wes said immediately.

Danny rolled over and forced his eyes open so he could give his intruder a thoroughly unconvinced look.

"Okay, so I may have discovered that he's a half-ghost like you and also secretly the mayor and now he wants me gone."

"Seriously? Ugh..." Danny forced himself up and out of bed. "Ancients, how do you get yourself into shit like this."

"It's not like I do it on purpose!"

Danny raised an eyebrow.

Wes held his ground for only a moment before his shoulders slumped and he gave in.

"Okay, so it's like this—"

[5 Hours Earlier]

If Kyle knew Wes was awake at six am on a Saturday, he would have torn him apart. But Wes was onto something, and he was nothing if not perseverant. Late last night, he'd been researching Danny's nemesis, the Wisconsin Ghost, AKA Vlad Plasmius, a lesser known alias Wes had only just learned recently. 

Mostly, he had been wondering why Danny's nemesis was from Wisconsin, when Danny himself lived in Illinois, and why a ghost who was famously from Wisconsin, had been regularly sighted in Amity Park in the last few months, while not being sighted in his usual territory at all.

That led him to the interesting discovery that the Wisconsin Ghost could often be spotted near Mayor Master's Wisconsin Mansion, which was also his former primary residence before he moved to Amity Park, and that sightings of the Wisconsin Ghost in Amity Park had increased exponentially after Mayor Masters won the election and made the Mayoral Manor his primary residence.

This, of course, gave rise to three potential theories. First, that the Wisconsin Ghost, in addition to being Phantom's nemesis, was also haunting Mayor Masters, for some reason. Second, that the Wisconsin Ghost was actually working with Mayor Masters. And third, that the Wisconsin Ghost and Mayor Masters were actually one and the same, a half-ghost, like Phantom himself.

Mayor Masters never seemed particularly bothered by ghosts, so the first theory—though most Amity Parker's would have considered it the most obvious one—didn't actually seem all that likely. Wes was not the typically Amity Parker, and he was better versed on ghost biology and behavior than almost anyone, including, arguably, the Fentons.

As for the second theory, Wes had thought it was the most likely at first. Half-ghosts were incredibly rare, so he didn't see any reason why two half-ghosts would be enemies, rather than allies. They would both have to be rather stupid to pass up that opportunity, or so he thought.

However, when he looked into news sources for stories about Mayor Masters' success, he discovered that most of the trades and mergers from which he'd gained most of his fortune had occurred without the other party having any memory of agreeing to them. There were also a few suspiciously timed bank robberies, and Wes remembered right after Mayor Masters was elected, no one could remember actually voting for him. Even his most vocal supporter couldn't remember actually going into the polls.

These accounts lined up with some of the accounts Wes had gathered regarding people who'd experienced being overshadowed by ghosts. Others could remember what happened, but felt as if they hadn't been in control of their bodies, or what they were saying or doing. So Mayor Masters having a ghostly ally on his side, controlling people to his whims would make a lot of sense.

Wes hadn't seriously entertained the third theory for the aforementioned 'they would have to be stupid' reasons. Then, he read a news report from not too long ago that noted another ghost (unnamed in the report, but Wes was willing to hazard a guess that it was probably Phantom) referring to the Wisconsin Ghost as Vlad Plasmius. That prompted him to give his third theory a second look. 

The security at the Mayoral Manor was surprisingly lax. It seemed that, like most of the people in Amity Park, the mayor had opted for a security system designed to keep out ghosts. It hardly provided any measures at all to stop a human from breaking in.

Honestly, it made sense, since the human crime rate in Amity Park was the lowest in the state of Illinois and third lowest in the entire country, but the ghost attack rate being the highest in the world. Obviously the people who lived here would be more worried about ghosts than burglars. And anyway, Wes wasn't about to complain, since it worked out in his favor more often than not. Although he did feel a little bit bad for all the security companies in Amity Park that went under because of the town's flip-flopped priorities.

So Wes snuck into the mansion pretty easily, stealthily made his way past the butler and poked around looking for... for... well, he would know it when he saw it. He was just looking for anything incriminating. Some kind of evidence.

Unfortunately for Wes, Green Bay Packers memorabilia didn't count as evidence, because if it did, he would be practically swimming in evidence. The stuff was everywhere.

Then he saw it. 

Despite his obvious obsession with the Green Bay Packers, Wes knew for a fact that Vlad had never played football himself, so that football trophy on the library mantel with his name on it was suspicious. Suspicious and extremely pathetic.

Upon examining the trophy more closely, he realized that it was some sort of trigger, and when Wes pulled on it, a secret door was revealed. Carefully, Wes snuck through it and... bingo. Top secret lab, hidden behind a top secret door hidden behind a not-so-ordinary fireplace would almost certainly contain something incriminating.

"Hello, may I help you?" 

Wes jumped and turned to see a hologram of Danny's mom standing behind him, wearing a hollow, fifties housewife sort of smile that he'd never seen the woman wear in real life.

"Uh... hi," Wes said. "I'm Mayor Masters' new apprentice? He uh... he told me to go to his lab ahead and get started on digital inventory while I waited for him to get here. Didn't warn me about his holographic assistant, sorry for startling so bad. I just wasn't expecting you."

He didn't actually think the hologram was sentient enough to be offended, but he also wasn't stupid enough to take that risk in a secret ghost science lab of all places.

"Processing," the hologram said. "I can find no information regarding an apprentice in any of my honey-bun's files."

Honey-bun? Creepy.

"He only just agreed to take me on," Wes assured her. "Literally, like, twenty minutes ago upstairs, and then he sent me down here to get started. He hasn't had the chance to put me in the files yet."

"Understood. Please state your name."

"Mikey Weissman," Wes replied. That was his go-to fake name whenever he was doing anything illegal. Mikey was verifiably a real person, a Casper High freshman, and a redhead. However, he'd never been in in the news, wasn't well known at school, let alone around town. He played clarinet. He was invisible.

Yeah... Mikey got in trouble for a lot of shit he knew absolutely nothing about because Wes gave the cops his name.

Much to Wes' surprise, that actually seemed to work, and the holographic Mrs. Fenton didn't question his further, though she did supervise him as he started to take 'digital inventory', reading Mayor Masters' files, watching videos. He did his best to make sure it looked like he was actually trying to inventory everything. And more importantly, to not look like he was surprised by anything, even though there was some pretty surprising stuff among all the junk and bad poetry for one 'stupendous and beautiful Maddie', whom Wes could only assume was Maddie Fenton.

If he hadn't known already that Mayor Masters was a creep, he would have figured it out incredibly quickly.

It was weird to do this kind of thing with someone—or at least a close approximation of someone—watching him, but the hologram didn't try to interfere. Hopefully that meant she was buying his act because he didn't really have a plan B.

There was... wow... there was a whole lot of evidence on the computers in here. Apparently The mayor had attempted to clone Danny with middling success. Most of the clones hadn't been viable, but of the baker's dozen that had, twelve destabilized, and only one remained at large DC-013 AKA Danielle. Tracking data showed her in Thailand. Masters didn't seem to be controlling her at all, just keeping tabs on her. Wes wasn't really sure what to make of that.

There was also a massive folder full of numerous files, each one detailing a different plan to murder Jack Fenton. Another folder was full of poetry, gift ideas, playlists, and other various ideas to woo Maddie. And a third folder was full of potential schemes for bringing Danny over to Masters' side and/or convince him to let Masters' adopt him. There was no folder regarding Jazz, which, honestly, said as much about the guy as the three folders on the rest of the Fenton Family, if you asked Wes.

Additionally, there was a folder on Valerie Gray that was incredibly stalkery, even by Wes' standards. Apparently, Masters was the one funding and resourcing her little ghost hunting hobby.

The creep factor was already dialed up to eleven when Wes found what he was actually looking for. 

It was a folder labeled 'test flights' and it was full of video documentation of him transforming into the Wisconsin Ghost AKA Vlad Plasmius, in order to test or train his various ghostly abilities. So that was it, then. Theory three for the win. Mayor Masters was a powerful half ghost beefing with a fourteen-year-old. And also an incredibly pitiful old man.

"When did my sugar-cake say he'd be coming down?" the holographic assistant finally asked after Wes had been going through the computer for about an hour.

That sounded like a cue, if ever he heard one. Wes made a big show of looking at his watch. 

"Actually... you know what? He should have been down a while ago," he said. "Maybe he got caught up with something. You know what, I'll go upstairs and check-in with him. I have some questions about how he wants these Fenton Folders organized, anyway. I'll be right back and finish my inventory."

"Alright, Mikey," she said. "If you need any help, just ask."

"Thanks." He left the secret lab and walked right out of the mansion without anyone noticing.

[4 Hours Later]

"If you gave a fake name and walked out without being seen, why is he after you?" Danny asked. 

He'd had enough time by now to fully wake up, but he was still in his pajamas, sitting on his bed, staring at Wes with the most absolutely done expression he could manage. Because he was absolutely done with Wes. Honestly he wasn't even sure why he was still listening except that he wanted to know exactly how to mock Wes for his failure.

"He still thinks my name is Mikey, but his hologram of your mom was apparently recording me the whole time," Wes explained. "I don't know how, because I didn't see any cameras in there, and I don't know why anyone would even put cameras in a top secret lab, but he knows my face."

"Yeah, still fucking creepy that he made his holographic assistant look like my mom, but also very Vlad," Danny said with a sigh. "So why'd you come here?"

"I figured if anyone would know how to deal with him it would be you," Wes replied obviously. "I mean he is your nemesis."

Danny raised an eyebrow.

"Come on, you have ghost powers! You've fought this guy before! Please, help me!"

Another, deep, tired sigh left Danny's lips and he shook his head.

"Alright, fine. Obviously he doesn't know you're here yet, or he would be too."

"I think he's using traffic cams to find me, but they always fritz out around your house because of all the ambient ectoplasm, so I guess it's slowing him down. It won't for long."

"Then why wait for him to find us and destroy my house to get to you?" Danny asked. "Let's take this outside."

In a flash of light, he transformed into his ghost form, grabbed Wes, and flew right out the window while Wes shouted in alarm. If there was going to be a fight, he might as well get it over with.

[2 Hours Earlier]

Wes was minding his own business. No really, he was. He'd done all the investigating he wanted to do that day, and he was bird watching in one of his favorite spots on the outskirts of town. He liked bird watching, although obviously it wasn't something he liked to advertise. He got bullied and mocked enough for being a conspiracy theorist—even though his theories were all true and none of them involved actual conspiracies—and he didn't need people at school knowing he was a dorky bird watching loser, too.

It was actually lucky he was watching the sky, because otherwise, he wouldn't have noticed the three, talking, glowing, fez-wearing vultures flying his way. It was obvious from the get-go that they were after him. They made it no secret that they'd been ordered to take him out, and Wes had a pretty good guess of who'd given that order.

He ran.

He ran fast and far, weaving through side-streets and alleys, and staying under every cover he could find so that he couldn't be seen from above.

The vultures weren't particularly smart, and Wes knew the area extremely well. It wasn't his favorite birding spot for nothing. It wasn't long before he gave them the slip, maybe twenty minutes or so, and he made his way into town, keeping to the crowds and making sure to look away from any cameras so they couldn't get clear shots of his face.

Unfortunately, once he got to the downtown area, he was found by the man himself, or rather the ghost. Vlad Plasmius floated above the crowd of shoppers and declared:

"Mikey Weissman, you will pay with your life! Show yourself!"

Much to Wes' surprise, the actual Mikey Weissman also happened to be out shopping this fine Saturday morning.

"What did I do?" Mikey shouted, his voice cracking badly and sounding exceedingly distressed.

"Who are you?" Plasmius sneered.

Wes did not show himself. He ducked his head down, crouched, ignored both Mikey and the Wisconsin ghost, and took off running again, this time toward Fenton Works.

Like the vultures, Plasmius was not an Amity Park local, and Wes knew the place like the back of his hand. He had the home court advantage and he was going to abuse the hell out of it.

He managed to make it all the way to Fenton Works without being followed and snuck in through Danny's window as he had many times before, although Danny typically wasn't home when he did so. This time, however, Danny was home, as Wes knew he would be, and he was also quite cranky at having been awoken, despite the fact that it was nearly noon.

[1 Hour Later]

Danny had landed them both on the top level of a parking garage, and waved at the CCTV cameras pointed at them, though they no doubt didn't pick up anything resembling a clear image of the half ghost.

When Vlad didn't show up in ten minutes, Danny considered actually calling the fruit loop. He didn't want to wait around all day. 

Thankfully, he didn't have to.

It was just a few minutes more before Vlad showed up in full Plasmius form to get at Wes.

"Give him to me," Vlad said.

"No," Danny replied with a casual shake of his head.

Vlad created five duplicates to help him menace the two teenagers before him. "He broke into my house, Daniel," he said flatly.

Wes looked like he might piss himself, but Danny remained nonchalant. He was more concerned with what he was going to eat for lunch than whether Wes lived or died, if he was being perfectly honest, but that was more because Wes had woken him up so early than anything else.

"So? He does that to me all the time?"

"He accessed my private files. He knows my secret, and no doubt yours, too," Vlad insisted. "What if he tells someone?"

"You know, I'll tell you exactly what's gonna happen if he tells people," Danny replied. "Not only will people not believe him, they with also completely write him off as a kook and a nutcase, and they will ostracize and mercilessly mock him forever and ever. I know because he's known and been actively trying to expose my identity at school for, like, almost six months, and that's what happens.

"You think people are gonna be any more likely to believe him when his target is the actual mayor, and not just some random kid?"

"And what if they do?"

"Then, you can kill him," Danny replied with a shrug.

"What?!" Wes shouted. "I thought you were gonna help me?"

"I am helping," Danny insisted. "Be realistic Wes, no one will ever believe you."

"You seem rather confident," Vlad said.

"I have literally never been more confident about anything in my life," Danny told him. "You could transform, in-person, in front of a hundred people, and if Wes was so much as standing there gesturing at you, they would all instantly think it was a hoax."

Wes opened his mouth with an indignant expression, looking like he wanted to argue, but at the slightest raise of an eyebrow from Danny, he shut it again. Either he knew Danny was right, or he knew that it would be stupid to argue with him when his life literally hinged on having zero credibility. Probably both, actually. Wes was a smart kid, even if most people didn't know it.

"Trust me, Vlad, you have nothing to worry about from this guy," Danny assured him. "So if you want to fight me, fight me. I would love to take out my early wake-up call frustrations, but just let Wes go. He's absolutely not worth it."

Vlad glared down at them for a long moment—all six of him.

Then, at last, he reabsorbed his duplicates and lowered himself to the concrete below him.

"Very well," he agreed. "I have other matters to deal with today, anyway. But know this," he looked pointedly and intensely at Wes. "If you expose me, the punishment will be a slow, and excruciatingly painful death. Do I make myself understood?"

Wes swallowed hard, and nodded rapidly, his eyes wide with fear.

"Good." With that, Vlad vanished.

"Welp, looks like my work here is done," Danny decided.

He took off, flying back home to catch another couple hours of sleep if he could swing it. Wes was left on the top level of that parking garage. After all that bragging he'd done about Amity Park being his home turf and how well he knew it, Danny was sure he would be able to get home by himself. Even if Danny had deliberately chosen a parking garage as far away from Wes' apartment as possible.

[kawaiijohn]

Her Flame Burns Despite the Storm

Written for @ectoplasmicsoda @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy and @underforeversgrace for Phic Phight 2024!

Rating: Teen

Words: 11K

Warnings: Major character death, gaslighting, manipulation, violence, horror elements, psych horror elements, references to suicide, discussion of tornadoes and storms, the Fenton's A+ parenting, non linear story telling, spectra being herself.

Finally wrote the Magia AU I've been dreaming of! Please enjoy this story about suffering and wanting a happy ending no matter what.

This story is very Jazz centric and told from Danny's POV for the first half.

Mind the tags on Ao3 please!

The events in this story are not presented in chronological order. Do not worry, do not fret, do not panic. Everything will be explained.

It hurt.

He always knew it would hurt. He didn't realize how much it would until it finally happened.

And it happened when he was still so young– barely a month into his high school career and he was laying on the ground as something truly monstrous shatters Casper High behind him. The wind roars and he feels his eyes burn, tears threatening to fall as he recalls telling his parents he was practically grown just this morning– telling Jazz he wasn’t a baby anymore as she rolled her eyes after giving him one of her ever increasing exhausted glares.

The ground shakes and lights burn in the distance as the monster throws another football goal into a house. He hopes nobody was inside, he hopes other families actually heeded the warning to shelter the news blasted hours ahead of this freak storm-turned-horror.

Danny held his palm to the gaping wound in his side– hissing when contact was made, and wishing the tacky feeling on his hand was anything but blood. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend it was milkshake, or partially dried glue. But he knows closing his eyes isn’t good in a situation like this.

He needs to see where Jazz went.

Continue reading here!!

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

Hi hi hi, I would love to hear more of your Dan thoughts! I'm intrigued!!!

>:]!!!!!!!!!! >:D!!!!!!

Ok ok so I've never really tried to put my thoughts into words before so this might be a bit of a mess usually I'm just rotating him in my mind but yes yes yes I have Dan thoughts I want to share my Dan thoughts

I only focus on agit at the end so this is pretty spoiler free for that I think maybe. Thumbs up emoji

Dan is a fun character because despite only having one episode we can still tell alot about his personality and such, as he's rather bold with it and is a fusion of two characters we do see alot, and it really shows! I flip between saying Dan or more Danny than Vlad and saying that they're basically equal in the fusion, but I think a good way to describe it is that he takes different aspects from them, for his appearance and memories he very much takes after Danny, but his personality and how he acts n talks oozes Vlad. Yknow??? If I'm saying the right words here. Dan works so well as a fusion because he also manages to feel like his own character as well

Dan is made from the two's ghost halves, so I'm a fan of the theory/thought I do believe I've seen before that he's based on the ghost halves. Like. Vlad used his ghost form and powers for scheming, attacking, gaining power, and so on, I'd easily imagine he doesn't use it nearly as much as Danny. Danny had to use his ghost form mostly for fighting other ghosts, very frequently, and also used his powers for his own benefit as well, though not nearly as extreme as Vlad. As Danny was in his ghost form more, and as it was more connected to his ghost form (phantom just being an inverted Danny VS Vlad's completely different from himself ghost form, even down to body type) it makes sense why Dan would be more Danny focused, especially in terms of his relationship with others and memories. Vlad's things don't matter to him nearly as much. I mean, he seemingly couldn't find Vlad's new hideout that was under a Welcome to Wisconsin sign, and its ghost zone entrance behind a football

"The only remaining portal, the one my idiot cheesehead archenemy has? As soon as I find it that's going too."

He doesn't respect Vlad in the slightest or seem to care about him. Danny found Vlad's portal almost immediately. So either Dan simply couldn't remember things Vlad liked well enough to guess, and/or, he truly couldn't care less and didn't bother too hard with the search. Both makes sense, and since Vlad is fully human that very likely adds to the contempt and not seeing him as threat enough to find the portal quickly.

Something interesting, is the fact Dan knows Vlad had a portal at all, Dan partially destroyed Vlad's castle after being formed and its clearly in a different location now, unless that cave Vlad is in streaches all the way to his castle's basement Dan hasn't bothered checking? Which is. Unlikely. Which means Vlad had to make a new one. And Dan knew he did. Much to think about there I believe.

I do also think Dan actually doesn't remember his past terribly well. I know I know I just said he's focused on Danny's memories and life, and he is! But also. Its a bit separated from him, the episode itself actually points out him forgetting things about his family several times, it really does feel like they're trying to stress to you, really hammer it in that he's forgotten them some way. It's mentioned offhand like 2 or 3 times.

When Jazz confronts him and admits she knew about his ghost powers he says "You knew?" So??? Softly???? Like PLEASE listen to that line especially after hearing how he usually talks oh my GOSH??!?!!?!?!?! AUGH. slamming my hands on the floor I could make a whole separate thing just thinking of that interaction alone. God. He never knew she knew, it took him by genuine surprise for a moment. And just????? Augh??!???!?!!?!?! He had one family member always in his corner and secretly looking out for him, she believed in him and knew he was trying to do good and she had been waiting for him to reveal it to her in his own time but that time never came because she'd died and haiabsjahasguaaaai u ghjjfhdhfjshauhghhhhh

When Danny enters the future Valerie immediately thinks he Dan, she doesn't question it in the slightest, or question him saying "I have really bad feeling im the one responsible". Before attacking she says "You can't fool me this time Phantom". I take this as either meaning Dan has disguised himself as a young Phantom before, or Valerie is so used to his tricks and and finding new powers that him suddenly looking younger doesn't phase her in the slightest. I do like the idea him disguising as a young Phantom before more. It seems very probable considering he can be Danny Fenton. But this interaction also makes me wonder if Valerie knows, or ever learned that Fenton is Phantom, the trick from before easily could've been Fenton. "The explosion at the Nasty Burger, you, Tucker, Danny's family- and it was all your fault!" She's points her blaster at Phantom while saying that last bit. It makes me wonder if her saying "Danny's family" is showing how she doesn't know he's Danny. There's still other options like her knowing but not admitting he's Fenton, or her knowing he was Danny once but isn't anymore, hence saying "Danny's family" instead of something like "his family". Honestly, her knowing or not are both equally likely. As I said in my tags before, Dan seems to like to get a rise out of people, to get a reaction, he very easily could've told her in an attempt to anger or devastate her, and at the same time he simply could've not bothered at all. I think I prefer the option of her not knowing personally

I don't think I could describe Dan more concisely than I did before, he likes to get a rise out of people, revel in reactions. He twists the past to credit himself for the Nasty Burger explosion after he more than likely blamed himself for it as Danny. He likes to seem in control. He's dramatic. He hates being insulted. Hates losing. He's very casual about alot of things he does.

He caused destruction in both the human and ghost world, the first thing he did upon entering Amity was completely destroy the ghost portal, with plans to destroy Vlad's. I'm not sure what his plan in the end was, but after destroying both portals, I must point out that Dan has the power to summon his own ghost portal with ease, a power I believe is quite rare, I think other than Dan only Wulf has it, though do feel free to correct me on that. So he would've been one of the only people who could go in or out

He was actively trying to/did ruin the lives of the ghosts he knew

Powers. Ohhh boy powers. When I started my DP rewatch my initial plan was to actually take note of every power Danny uses to know what he can do, and by extension Dan. I didn't. Oopsies. So most I can focus on here are what Dan shows in the episode, other than the obvious

I do like thinking on ice powers, and what that means with Dan, obviously he's never shown to know them as they're not introduced until season 3, the writers themselves didn't know it'd happen lol. But in universe, that's something to chew on, Dan never met Frostbite, so if he ever unlocked this power he would've had to figure out the problem and train it on his own, and then there's the potential that Dan never learned, and the ability for ice powers eluded him due to fusion. The ghost sense is a result of his ice powers after all, and Dan's ghost sense isn't a breath of cold blue air, so that could be a sign of this power being one he doesn't have

But moving onto more straightforward powers

Dan destroyed Amity Park in a very short amount of time, all on his own, as while the Fright Knight had been there after the shield went down, he's simply never seen again after that, makes me think Dan just ordered Fright Knight to chase Valerie to Fentonworks and leave after

Related to Amity Park, while there are other destroyed buildings around, the land surrounding the ghost portal is a completely barren wasteland, no doubt from Dan's attempts at destroying the forcefield over the years, and simply scaring residents.

One could argue Dan was the reason lighting was striking around the forcefield, weather manipulation I wouldn't doubt is in his wheelhouse, especially since he's shown to have electrocution powers, at least it looks that way to me

Dan has fire powers, at least immunity to fire. Fire rises after he enters the lab through the cracks he put in the floor, and when he's thrown into truck it bursts into flame. Both instances of the fire happening I suppose you call coincidence, but his immunity to fire at least is undeniable

Dan can force Danny to detransform, and shorted out Danny's powers while holding onto him. This is also the moment where it seems like mild electrocution

Dan can suspend people in ectoplasm, Sam and Tucker also seem frozen completely for a scene, and in a later scene move their heads n such around

He can use a time medallion to enter the exact time and place he needs/where Sam and Tucker went

He specifically used the word fused to describe putting the amulet in Danny, which I find interesting. Entering something while intangible seems to be what causes fusion. Though more to it than that since ghosts can possess other ghosts (or was that a special case since the only example I know is Poindexter possessing a still half ghost Danny🤔)

Dan can form ropes of ectoplasm that can wrap around and trap people, as well as using ecto energy to cover people's mouths to stop talking

Dan is very resilient, I mean, he literally flys through a light pole non-intagabily and doesn't even react. He, while injured from it, did pretty much tank 1 ghostly wail, and still got up after the second, but was weak enough after to be sucked into the thermos

Dan seems to have minor technology powers, nothing major, but like, he does make himself appear on Valerie's watch so he can tell her about the ghostly wail

The ghostly wail of course, which is naturally much stronger than Danny's version. Can destroy nearly all glass in future Amity Park, destroys all the ghost shield towers one by one in a line, makes the Fentonworks building fall down when directly hit. Flips tanks and makes helicopters lose control. Destroyed Ember's vocal cords somehow

He can duplicate himself very easily, and become one again with the same ease. He turns into to a gas form to dodge Valerie's grenades

---

I don't have the time to focus on his behavior in AGiT rn, but it lines up with my thoughts. I do like the confirmation that Dan wanted Danny to suffer as he had/didn't think it fair for Danny to get a second chance to save his family. And it deeply trapped by his own emotions and just unwilling to admit it. I can still skim the book to think about powers. I put AGiT powers in this own little section to be skipped if you don't want spoilers

-He 100% has fire powers no doubt about it now

-I should've described his ability to suspend people in ectoplasm as telekinesis

-Can make shields, usually briefly and by swiping his arm

-When Dan emerges from the rubble, he briefly turns it into lava, and then water, I cannot be sure if this is because of having Clockwork's powers, or just his own at work

-His powers seem to turn blue rather than green, but its hard to tell for certain. But we do know his fire is blue so it's not completely out

---

In conclusion I'm very normal about him and have watched TUE a reasonable amount of times thank you amd goodnight <3 (lying voice)

[phantomphangphucker]

Phic Phight - Reassembly Required

For: @berry-berry-blu @faeriekit @dykesville @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy ghxstkids @nat-space-obsessed @fan-dot Cake @carelisswriting @redactedgoose @jessaverant

For ghosts organs are optional, bones are optional, skin is optional, limbs are optional, heads are optional. Meaning that: head, shoulders, knees, and toes; all these pieces certainly must go!

Valerie just really hates jigsaw puzzles now.

Okay, Valerie is dealing with some shit right now. Not the normal kind of shit either… well it was still ghost related just not in the way it normally was. Decidedly not. And she’s not entirely sure what to do about that fact alone. Another fact she’s not sure what to do about is the fact that she is currently helping, yes helping, a ghost. Actually helping, not just being battle buddies. Sure it’s Phantom she’s helping and he or it or whatever was… okay… okay-ish. But he’s also why she even does everything.

Good-ish behaviour or not Phantom’s still a ghostly menace.

And here she is.

Helping he/it.

She’d question why but well, it would be pretty messed up of her to not help someone/something, anyone/anything, who had somehow survived -if being still dead but not gone counted as surviving- being fucking dismembered (who does that to someone?!?!?!?) and having its/their parts ‘conveniently’ wrapped/stored into a bunch of garbage bags.

She hadn’t even realized it was Phantom in there. But vaguely squirming black bags plus suspicious looking men -who were not in white suits- was a damn good cause for concern, and for theft of said vaguely squirming bags.

On that note, did you know that apparently disconnected ghostly body parts just squirmed and wiggled on their own? And were more gooey messy stuff than solid matter? Yeah no, probably not. She definitely hadn’t and would have like to have kept it that way. Instead she had committed vehicular break and enter, with maybe a side of arson, all to wind up finding out that fact when she opened the bag.

She expect kittens, or puppies, or something equally horrible. Horrible but both less horrible and more normal than this. Zone, human babies would have been less startling, much more upsetting though.

You win some you lose some right?

Oh god.

She needs fucking therapy. Especially after this bullshit. Grimacing and having to readjust the repurposed laptop bag strap she’s using to hold down what she thinks is a section of a forearm so she can continue sticking it back on to what she’s absolutely sure is definitely an elbow. She really hates the whole squirming on its own fact.

That… or Phantom is being a dick and is actually conscious and is just messing with her. She’ll end Phantom herself if that’s the case. She doubts it though.

At least she’s got one hand back together, why those whackos decided to remove each segment of finger at each and every joint she will never know. Doesn’t want to know even. Phantom will absolutely tell her though, be he thinks body horror is ‘funny’. Asshole.

Even pretends he ‘forgot’ that that kind of body horror usually kills people to do. With Its stupid, “oh yeah”, line.

Zone why is she doing this for this asshole again? She’s probably going to give herself nightmares, and what’s up with how goddamn gooey everything is? She expected some kind of solid matter, or at least a sturdy internal structure perhaps. But this fucking Jello and jet black semi-solid bone chunks mess might be better, because see, she made a plan -kinda maybe- after she opened up the first bag and was met with a goddamn swear-to-the-zone-and-back toxic green eye staring back at her unseeingly and twitching like people’s eyes do when they’re having chaotic dreams. The fucking whole skull, completely de-skinned because people are CRAZY, and loose teeth really added to the nightmare. All the green made it less nightmarish but oof, she hadn’t been okay with that and still wasn’t. But she has a plan at least.

That plan? Stick all the ‘ends’ together and the ‘bits’ back into or onto whatever they were supposed to be in/on, then all that ecto goo ghosts were apparently actually made of would just, you know, stick back together? Zone she’d seen Phantom just ‘pop’ an arm back on before.

But no. Apparently not. Because now she’s sitting in her room, with a bunch of her-damned and Phantom-damned bags of ghostly body parts attempting to put everything back together with a sewing needle and some thread she scrounged up from her closet. It was a little gross and dusty but surely ghosts can’t get infections from dust, right?

Whatever, Phantom should be thankful she’s doing this for Its sorry ass even if he does get some kind of dust infection.

And fine, maybe, maybe, ghost just being pure ecto, and not having a more proper firm structure like living beings, should have obvious but shes not a damn scientist okay?

“Shit!”, Valarie has to jump up, practically scrambling to catch the now run away hand; abandoning the nearly finished elbow and maybe-half-a-forearm. Having to jump on it to pin it to the ground like a cat after a mouse, “do I have to chase you every time we meet?”, and glares at the hand as she picks it up; it spasms a bit. She hopes that wasn’t some kind of ‘response’. Again, she will end Phantom otherwise.

At least the part she was working on is still secure. Small mercies.

Anyway, where was she? Oh yeah her mild mental crisis about helping Phantom/a ghost that she’s mildly using to distract herself from the fact that’s she sewing together a disturbingly close to human body but like it was made of jello. Phantom could never make things easy on her could it? She’s maybe a little rougher than necessary about ripping open another bag to maybe try and find more arm bits; it’s a serious struggle not to gag. Muttering, “you’re doing the right thing. You’re doing the right thing. You’re doing the right thing”, repeatedly to herself all the while.

Would it be messed up of her to demand a burger after this? Yeah. Probably. But she’s making the spook get her a damn burger anyway because fuck him and his/its unending bullshit.

Besides, what kind of super powerful ghostly maybe-hero gets chopped into bits and tossed into trash bags like something out of a B list gangster film? Her life and his afterlife were in the supernatural genre, zone damnit.

What?

Did Phantom agree to it?

Did It lose a bet with oddly high stakes?

Got caught up in a ghost body part trafficking ring?

Take a nap in a trash compactor that was just missing a lot of teeth?

Grimacing to herself… okay he might actually do something like that, and then finds a genuinely completely intact upper arm. What a blessing.

Ugh.

Well at least all she needs now is the rest of the forearm and she can stick the hand on. Hopefully the arm matches the hand, it might not. Does she really care though? If it still works than no. Phantom can rip Itself apart and slap Itself/himself back together again later, without her involvement, if he’s unimpressed with her workmanship.

She physically sits on the hand, so it can’t escape again, as she gets to work stitching the upper arm onto the elbow. Well she would get to work if the damn elbow would stop flailing and bending rapidly or occasionally liquifying, “would you goddamn stop that, I’m trying to help you here”, sighing as it just seems more erratic and wiggly, “why is this my life. I hate you so much”.

She winds up having to strap the elbow top down with some electrical tape she found in her drawer. It’s old and clearly not going to hold for long so she absolutely speeds through trying to stitch on the upper arm; it’s sloppy as hell and she doesn’t care.

The tape does indeed not hold and she gets smacked in the chin by the exposed upper portion of the arm for all her hard work. Zone she just feels so appreciated right now.

…

Now she’s also struck by the fact that she’s going to have to clean up her room after this, after Phantom is just leaking and flinging Its fucking ectoplasm goddamn everywhere. It’s in her hair, on her hands, covering the floor, there’s arches and splatters across the ceiling, her bedsheets are a hundred percent a lost cause, and now there’s also definitely some on her chin. At least what’s still sluggishly leaking out of the mostly rebuilt arm is just doing it very slowly; so it’s just kind of drooling out of the end and squirming in gooey strings. Rather than getting actually splattered around.

Electing to shove the hand in an old candle jar to stop any potential repeat runaway attempts before going about searching for the rest of the forearm.

It’s not fun. It’s really not fun. Pretty shit actually. Having to go bag by bag -was eight separate bags really necessary?- and push around mounds and globs of disconnected and disjointed ecto-flesh and ecto-organ soup (or maybe just organ-like things, she’s pretty sure ghosts do not have organs of any kind at all) hoping to find the particular bit of ecto-flesh that she’s actually looking for. Since spreading everything topour out on the floor was a bad idea for so many reasons, the hands escape attempt being one. Plus, that tactic didn't work with ikea furniture, it wouldn’t work for people… or ghosts in this case.

…

It was in with the, ugh, head bag. Which was the last one she checked. The one she most wanted it to not be in. Seeing a goddamn SKULL and eyes, unseeing or no, was a couple of notches past more disturbing than she’s honestly all that willing to put up with. Even for the maybe-good maybe-hero that is Phantom.

Frowning at the bit of forearm, “but if this was reversed, he’d do this for me without hesitation”, shaking her head, “ugh. Stupid idiot”.

If he wasn’t a ghost… she probably couldn’t bring herself to hate It at all. That had to be hypocritical of her, right? Plus she definitely wouldn’t piece back together someone she actually hated, Zone, she’d find a water bottle full of old piss and dump it on Vlad’s exposed parts before helping him out; maybe shake the piss filled bags around a little. So maybe she didn’t hate Phantom, he was okay, definitely okay enough to not be left as a collection of Bits & Bites™ mixed in with broth to make Campbells Chunky Soup™.

Scowling at herself and then glaring at the forearm to forearm sticking she’s doing, “Zone damn it Phantom, you’re corrupting me”. Morbid humour can’t be healthy, regardless of Phantom’s love for it. He’d never let her live it down if It knew she had referred to It as a snack food that’s just a bag full of a random collection of other snack foods mixed in with soup. You know. Like how he was currently bags full of a random collection of body parts and liquid ectoplasm.

At least the forearm being actually securely tied down, regardless of the upper arm still flailing and wiggly madly, makes the reattachment go smoothly enough.

Okay. So. The hand…

She chooses to just wrap some of the bedsheet around the hand to keep the fingers from flailing and scratching anything before putting hand stump to forearm stump and getting to work. She is very thankful that all Phantom’s parts are currently doing is random movements and not, like, randomly shooting off ecto-beams or making ecto-ice. She’s not foolish or prideful enough to think she’d actually survive being in an enclosed space with Phantom, with any part of It, randomly sending off attacks in random directions. She’d never realized how much he was holding back when she was young, when she first started, but she sure as shit figured that out after seeing the state he left Vlad’s -ugh- lab in.

It is definitely weird that that makes her feel better about the spook though. It could obliterate her and everyone else yet actively made a point to not hurt anyone intentionally or directly. Still did though, because he was a dumbass and also because she was, admittedly, over aggressive.

Right now though, she thinks it’s his hand and arm that are being ‘over aggressive’. Watching the fully reattached thing smacking itself into the floor with audible thumps. “The downstairs neighbours must hate us”. They did. They complained. A lot. Or they used to, until she bitched to Phantom about it during patrolling down time, after said neighbours had stabbed a broom into their roof to ‘make her quiet down’ so hard it punctured through her floor. Apparently Phantom ‘haunted their asses’ for three days and infected their fish tank with ‘signal signs’, she did not ask for an explanation. You know, that whole thing about gift horses and mouths.

Speaking of mouths, that is the last part Phantom’s getting reattached; for obvious reasons. Zone he could just never shut up; and trying to make him shut up just made the ghost more talkative.

She should do the other arm right? She got one figured out so round two should be assuredly easier… hopefully.

And it actually is. Weird. It’s just in two whole halves, an upper and a lower. Left arm? Maybe? It would make sense because if Phantom was defending Itself -which he damn well should have been- It most likely would have used Its right arm more to do that… meaning more damage would be done to the right arm.

…

If that’s the case she definitely attached the wrong hand. Shaking her head and shrugging, “Oh well. Phantom’s problem”. The only real downside to the more intact chunks is they’ve got a little more power, or energy maybe, to thrash around with. Little less ecto leaking though, an alright trade off really. Plus she still has to deal with another hand, which she is not looking forward to at all. Though wait, if the fixed hand was so turbo fucked then it has to be the right hand, because why would a mangled hand be attached to a less mangled arm?

Snaking her forehead, “I’m a dumbass”, sighing, “I can just check which side has the palm and thumb the right way. Ugh”. Getting up and abandoning the mostly stitched back together arm, which starts bouncing around on the ground gurgling out ectoplasm, to check the hand.

…

It’s the wrong fucking hand. Why is her luck such horseshit? Why is Phantom’s luck such horseshit? Why didn’t she have the brain cell required to actually check before attaching the hand?

Whelp, she ain’t fixing her fuck up now. But maybe she won’t attach the other hand to the obviously wrong arm; Phantom can deal with it.

… Unless she needs to put him back together completely for his sorry ass to wake up. That would be just the cream on top, wouldn’t it. Either way she goes back to finishing the other arms stitch work; which thankfully doesn’t go horribly and doesn’t get her smacked in the chin again. Which fine, might because she was on guard for a repeat offence this time.

Standing up after using her desk leg to sort of pin down the arm, putting her hands on her hips and eyeing the bags, “okay, legs; since I’m making the second hand Phantom’s problem”, grimacing, “and because I am deeply disturbed about what I’m going to have to deal with with the torso, and the head is, frankly, too freaky without shotgunning at least one Redbull™”, frowning more, “and maybe cracking open a Monster™ too, for good measure”. She just mildly hates this entire situation.

…

Scratch that, she aggressively hates this ENTIRE situation. She found feet skin. FEET SKIN. Fucking. Hollowed. Out. Floppy. Feet. Skin.

Who does this shit to someone??????? What the fuck???

Sure. Maybe. Phantom’s ’feet skins’ -Zone fucking Hell why- are more… boot? skins? Its feet outer ectoplasmic shell was just white boots after all, but still DISTURBING. What is she even supposed to do with this? Scowling, “Woe to those men. Dishonour on you, dishonour on your cow. Fuck”.

…

Now she has to go garbage bag digging for probably mushy feet innards. Fun. Exactly how she wanted to spend her afternoon. Groaning and looking back into the bag with the… feet skin and hoping it’s at least in the same damn bag.

Glaring down at the actually intact feet innards sludge, “I am currently thankful you are one of the weird ghosts that actually likes to maintain the illusion of bones, holyshit”. The black feet and toe bones ‘appear’ to be holding together the innard ectoplasm of his feet. It’s weird, vaguely solid-ish and needlessly gooey all at once. But regardless she gets up with that nightmare in hand and grimaces at the feet skins, this was gonna suck.

She now has the ‘fun’ task of stuffing wriggling feet ecto-innard goo and ecto-bones inside of pulsating feet/boot ecto-skin, like she’s putting on a seizing persons decidedly gushy and grippy socks. She has to stitch it on some since it’s not just snapping into being attached and, unlike socks, is not made of body hugging elastic.

The feet go in the candle jar immediately.

Wheezing to herself and shaking herself off some, “that might have been the worst thing I’ve ever done”, and shuddering before resuming looking for legs.

…

She doesn’t find legs. Like, at all. No thighs. No hips. No shins. No calves. No knees. Nada. You know what she does find though? A ghost tail. Yup, a full ghost tail. Which makes zero sense. Picking up and making faces at the surprisingly completely limp -though vibrating randomly- noodle-like thing, “how do or did you have both feet and a tail? What the Zone, Phantom?”. Better yet why couldn’t he have just had the tail? So that she wouldn’t have had to go through the crap she just did?!?!?!?!?!?.

… well at least it’s whole and intact. Fuck her life.

This unfortunately means it’s either torso or head time. Neither of which she wants to deal with. Especially not after that bullshit. What if she puts his goddamn face skin back on and the eyes in and everything and he just starts talking to her??? Yeah nope, not dealing with that. Not a chance. Yes if Phantom did do that It might be able to explain shit that she honestly doesn’t actually want explained but morbid curiosity is a thing, or be able to provide some advice on what the heck she’s doing.

Cause frankly?

She doesn’t know if she’s actually doing any of this shit right. Zone she already maybe put on the wrong damn hand!

She refuses to deal with his bantering though. Big ol’ fat no. An even bigger, fatter, ‘No’ if It banters while Its head is still detached from a torso.

So torso reconstruction it is. Meaning organs. Ugh. And considering she knows what bag the head, it’s skin, and the eyes and teeth, are in; she actually can just dump everything else, at this point her floor can go fuck itself. Anything that wiggles or squirms too much goes back in its plastic confines as punishment.

Valerie drops the tail and turns on the rest of the -head free- bags, dumping them in a messy pile unceremoniously. It’s a mess. It’s disgusting. It’s writhing and dripping and squelching. It’s a lot of things. Mostly it’s a mass of maybe-bones, maybe-organs that are maybe whole, and ecto-flesh; ectoplasm leaking and dripping in and out (somehow) of the squishy jello mound.

Her blinking, “… maybe making a fucking flesh mound wasn’t the best way to go about this, dear zone”. Breathing and massaging her temples, “okay. Okay. Let’s see. Uh”, sighing and dropping her hands, “drag out the outer ecto-flesh, hope it’s entirely intact even though I damn well know it ain’t gonna be. If it’s not intact then, fuck, try? to piece it back together like a very disturbing flesh puzzle”.

Not only is the flesh not intact -big surprise there. Not- but it’s also still connected to random bits of innard ectoplasm. Some is still connect to ecto-bone even. Even worse some of the innard ectoplasm and ecto-bone is also connected to other innard bits; making basically strings and webs of semi-solid mangled nightmare mess. She’s has precisely zero chance of figuring out what everything is and where everything goes.

Shoving everything around on the floor and throwing her hands up, “I give up on making sense of any of this”. So here’s the new plan, stitch the skin back together at random with mild attempts to make things straight-ish and aligned-ish; while giving very little fucks about how nice it looks since it will all probably have to be removed and redone.

By Phantom. Not her.

Who knows maybe he has experience stitching Itself back together from head to toe, he gets hurt enough that it’s possible… she pities him sometimes honestly. Like he’s out there doing the whole sorta heroing thing and getting shit kicked beyond shit kicked for it. Sure so was she but she didn’t get de-limbed vaguely regularly, not to mention this whole mess.

Lifting up a very square section of ecto-flesh, watching the stringing connections to what seems like a rib or half a rib, it warbles and makes a groaning noise. Valerie drops it immediately, whisper muttering, “what the fuck, Hell no”, a couple times. She does swallow and keep working on stitching together different pieces though, she’s not letting freaky ghost shit stop her from doing what she’s decided she’s going to do. Being extra freaky or not.

Unfortunately that is not the last time she encounters random moaning… stuff. She drops every single piece that does it and moves onto a different part every time.

And then the apartment door opens, or sounds like it does at least, making her freeze. Okay, alright, two options. Option one: they’re being robbed. Unlikely but possible, very unfortunate for the robber though because she WILL fuck their shit up while actively covered in gore. Option two: her dad’s home. Technically safer but ho boy, not good. He might be… alright more or less with her chosen profession, at this point. But being okay with your daughter kicking ghostly ass and occasionally getting slightly hurt was entirely different than walking in on your daughter reconstructing what’s practically a goo ghost corpse; a ghost corpse of the well-loved, highly respected, and celebrated town hero. Also her room looks like a fucking nightmare, Zone she probably looks like a fucking nightmare.

There’s the sound of keys being hung up, shoes being dropped on the ground before tucked away, the fridge being opened and closed, the coffee machine starting up, and a loud sigh. Yup. It’s her dad. She is so fucked. The vaguely more person-shaped mound seemingly agrees and moans from some part of Itself; the squelching is louder than the moan yet unfortunately less disturbing.

“You home, Sweetie?”.

Valerie swallows, yes or no? He’ll want to check in on her room either way so maybe if she tells him to, ugh, not come in then he’ll listen. Or he’ll make her at least come out and see him so he can see she’s fine. Normally it was just mildly inconvenient but made her feel warm and happy inside, but right now she’s positively covered in ectoplasm and bits of ghost flesh; if she was injured he wouldn’t be able to freaking see it past the ecto.

Which fine, that might have covered her from his worry more than once but Phantom always noticed because apparently blood had a noticeable smell, a thing she chooses not to think about too much.

Ah fuck it, if he comes in that would be worst case scenario here, “I’m home!”.

Apparently the downstairs neighbour has something to say about that, “I KNOW! I HAD TO PUT DOWN A GODDAMN BUCKET TO CATCH ALL THE GODDAMN ECTOPLASM DRIPPING DOWN FROM YOUR GODDAMN FLOOR! SORT YOUR SHIT!”, followed by a, “please don’t get me haunted again!”.

Okay, she can’t help but chuckle nervously at that. Damn it. But… glancing around and right yeah, all she did to fix that ‘hole’ was throw cardboard over it. Cardboard that is fuck soaked in ectoplasm now. Whoops. She’d apologize but that would just make those folks feel more bold to yell up through the floor.

“Valerie…”. Now her dad sounds unimpressed and concerned, more unimpressed than concerned; good.

Her vaguely attempting to squish around the person-ish mound -she thinks she actually managed to get one shoulder looking actually right, go her- so it looks slightly neater and maybe to get it to stop bubbling? and weakly flinging itself around in sections. “I’m fine, dad. I’m just, ugh, patching up Phantom”, muttering, “stupid ass ghost”, under her breath and very specially at the blob. The arm with a hand picks that moment to free itself from the laptop bag strap and spastically bounce wiggle itself into the ceiling with a wet thwack. Valerie glaring, “thanks Phantom, I definitely needed an entire arm and hand print on my goddamn ceiling”.

“Oh? It’s not too bad is it? Do you need help? Him?”, he sounds closer to the door now; she’s seriously praying he does not come in. Let her, and Phantom honestly, have that little ounce of luck.

Hurriedly responding, “no, no, no, no help necessary. But, it is bad, dad”, wincing, “I think he’ll be fine since he hasn’t started fading or anything”, muttering quietly to herself, “I have no clue how though”. Because really? How was this in any shape, way, or form, survivable to any degree? “You don’t have a protective suit or anything so you definitely should not come in”. Please let him listen to her, please let him listen to her, please let him-

“If you’re sure, I don’t like the sounds of that though and you know it. Once you do have him patched up, I want to see both of you just for my own peace of mind; okay?”.

She knows damn well she can’t get out of this one, but Zone does she wish she could. Plus she doesn’t exactly know how possible that will be for Phantom. Even if she had somehow by some miracle actually managed to put the ghost back together again perfectly, which she clearly didn’t, there’s no way It wouldn’t still be hurt and exhausted and whatever else. He’d probably want to go see that doctor he’s said he/It has; that still baffles her some. Ghosts having fucking doctors. Sighing to herself, “okay. Can’t guarantee Phantom will be super up for a chat though”.

…

“Based on him not making some joke I’m guessing he’s unconscious?”.

Valerie winces, over both the comment and the fully intact arm plus hand practically slapping into the torso flesh mound, “yes?”.

Thankfully her dad sighs, “I’ll be in the living room then. I will check in every hour on the hour though, missy. And I will come in there if I don’t get a response”, and sounds like he’s walking away from the door.

… So looks like future her and future Phantom will have that problem to deal with. After dealing with the current, much more dire and insane, one.

Sighing and frowning, she pries the spasming arm hand out of the torso mound, “stop hitting yourself, you idiot. That’s my job”. She gets the hand arm tied back down onto one of her bed legs, at least the other arm -still sans a hand- was still pinned down by her desk. And the-

Shit.

The feet escaped their candle jar jail, Zone damn it.

Standing up abruptly and looking around, “fuck me, fuck me, fuck me. Where did you go you stupid bastard”. Getting down on her knees to check under the bed, yup there’s a foot, it’s kicking her wall, flopping over, flailing, and spasming up and down like a goddamn game glitch. “Every single part of you is unnecessarily dramatic, Phantom. Now come here you”. Today was going to give her extremely unique nightmares. Like a mob of mildly sentient feet attacking her from beneath her bed. Hooray for probably eventual insomnia induced creativity.

The foot goes back in the jar, her putting a desk weight on top of it for good measure while she hopefully goes to find the other missing foot.

She spends a good twenty minutes almost ripping her room apart, no foot. Okay so either it A) dissolved, a very bad omen. Or B) it’s successfully hidden itself and Phantom will have to find Its own shit. Or, and this is the really shitty option, C) its escaped the apartment entirely and has begun terrorizing the other tenants or random people on the street with its mere existence; meaning she’ll have to hunt down Phantom’s dismembered foot, which is probably leaving a mild trail of ectoplasm drippings and streaks where ever it is.

As it is she’ll have to deep clean even under her entire bed and the damn wall back there now. Ugh, cleaning everything was going to be a nightmare. Groaning into her hands, “if I get It back together then maybe Phantom can be helpful”, groaning again for good measure before moving back over to the torso mound and blink, titling her head, “I think it’s reconstructed itself? Or rearranged itself?”, well either way it was less horrific to look at. Though watching as some of the stringy connections warble and leak out more ectoplasm from somewhere -how much ectoplasm can one damn ghost have?- before shaping? a bit better; yeah this was still distinctly freaky. Making faces, “are you, er, conscious now? Reforming?”. She gets back the clicks, screeches, warbles, whistles, and static that she knows is ghost speak.

b̶̳͔̝̫̜̖̾̎̿̅͂͒̑͂̕͜ͅà̶͉̠̲̇́̿͑̽͒c̷̘̻̤͍͔̖͍̣̿̔͆̕͠k̶̛̬̤̻̗̄͊̊̔͆͊͑̕ ̸̻̂̃̿̍͗̉̏̕o̶̯̲̙̻̰̳͈̠̣̎f̷̢̰̟̹͝f̶̱̫͌̈́͊͋̇́͝.̷̢̣̥̻̹͚̉̿̈́̊͝ ̴̩̟̙̗̌̈H̷͓̪̳͉̻̄u̶̙̬͈͈̔̾͂̐̃̚̕͠ͅr̸̗̓̚t̸̛͍̱̰̰͍̩̏̈́͆͐͛͛͑͝ͅͅ.̷̫̜̭̤̺̖͍́̌̔̋̅͆̚ͅ ̷͎̟̠̖̲͌̋͛̈́͊̒̊́P̵̪͙̰̲͆̾̿̆a̵͍̙̠̼͕̪̪͑͌̏̿̃́̑i̷̺͈̜̯̩̝̓̆̏̐̊̍͜n̵͕̱̠̗͋̀̇̀͝͝.̶̧̢̱͕̦̀̍̋̆͑̆́͠ ̶̧̓̉̎̂͑͘F̴̧͕̙̥̝̭͚̲̓̽̚͠ḯ̵̜̝̊̈́͐̀̀̈́̾͠x̶͇͇͒̈́̉̿̈́͋̂͌.̵̰̀̉̾̓̈́̌͠ͅ ̶̨̥͖̣̱̕Ṣ̷̡͓̗͓̟͈̊̉̓̕ͅt̷̡̪̔͂̌̍̍̀͊̚̚͜ͅạ̸̹̥͕̮̍̓̋̅̐̃̑̔̌y̴͍̭̘̘͒̾ͅ ̴͔͋͗̋̽̂̍ą̴̨̛͚̹̦̜͉̌̓w̴̘̺͓̥̝̩̘̟̓ấ̸̫͕͕̱́̽͒̿͝y̷̙̻͔͚̽.̴̡̀ ̵̖̥̲̦̿̄̎̓͗̾̍͘͠N̶̤̦̝͗̈̒̊̈͗͂͘͘ȍ̸̢̯̤̻̘̥̩͓̒ ̷̜̝̼̗̾̍͜t̸͇͎̩̏̀̀͋o̴̖̓͒̊͗͑ͅǔ̵̘̾͐̿̔̅̇̐̚ͅc̶̡̜̤̼̖̗̲͉̝͂̾ḥ̷͍͉͓̹̗̦̽̊͜ͅ.̷̗̳̝̘̙̦̦̀̊̀̌̀̀ ̴̰̝̣̙͙̟͕́̓̑̀̎Ḙ̷̡̬̗͓̼͚̜̐̃̍̚ͅw̵̥̬̔̂́̕͘

Valerie blinking, glad she’s gotten used to ghosts enough to not instinctually flinch or cover her ears. Not that she can remotely understand what ever was just said or if the mound even actually said actual words and not just random sounds. Phantom would be the type to just make random sounds purely because It could.

Standing up and eyeing the one untouched bag, ugh, “okay if you’re maybe sorting that mess out I guess I have to deal with the… head now”. Maybe she’ll get lucky and he’ll have at least his eyes or skin back where it should be.

Is she that lucky? Of course not! Why would she be?. Closing the bag again and breathing, “yeah okay. Nope”. Walking off to her desk, throwing a glare at the pinned arm before ripping open a drawer and grabbing a RedBull. Promptly stabbing it with a knife, one that isn’t infused with ectoplasm or nano bots or covered in ectoplasm, and shotgunning it; grabbing a Monster right after and cracking it open.

Moving back over to the bag and sitting down, still glaring, putting the Monster to the side and opening the bag up again. It’s still a nightmare but at least it’s a nightmare she’s dealing with while caffeinated now. Officially grabbing out the fucking soft skull and just staring for a beat; there’s squirming squiggly muscles attached to it which is somehow both better and so much worse. It looks like the thing is covered in a mass of writhing green worms and parasites.

“Valerie?”.

Valerie jumps a little, apparently so distracted by Phantoms Zone damned skull that she didn’t hear her dad approach, “I’m still okay and still doing patching up, dad”, eyeing the singular foot in a jar. Naw, it’s better if she doesn’t tell him to search for a dismembered foot; that’ll worry him even more.

“Alright”. It sounds like he’s walking off again.

Shaking herself and looking back to the skull, hopefully this is the only time she’s going to see someone’s skull to any degree. Tilting it and squinting in through an eye socket, the inside of his skull was glowing blue of all things. Is that good? Bad? Related to how Phantom, of all ghosts, wound up dismembered? Sticking a finger in to poke it, which she was actively trying not to think about, and jerking her hand back with a faint hiss; glancing at the ice on her finger. “Alright. Ow. Not doing that again. Point taken, geez”.

Then immediately scrunching up her entire body in a disturbed cringe as the skull vibrates, mouth clicking open and shrieking loudly at her.

She definitely hears her dad rushing over this time, “you okay?”.

Shaking herself off, “yeah, I just pissed Phantom off a little I guess”, cracking her neck and shaking herself off a little more, “dick”.

And then the fucking skull snaps back at her, opening its toothless jaw wide, holy fucking shit. “h̵̙̓ē̶̼ý̸͔ ̷̙͂f̶͎̋u̴͈͊c̴̘̏k̶͎̈́ ̵̳̀y̴̤͂o̶̖̚ủ̸̼ ̷̞̊t̷͎̚o̷̳̊ȍ̵̭ ̷̫̽t̸̮̍h̷̞͂a̵̢̔t̸̫͂ ̴̻̃h̶͙̓ủ̸̼r̸̖̿t̴̪͆.̵̬́ ̸̧̈́W̸̮͋h̵̲̍ǎ̵͉t̴̡̛ ̶̰̽t̶͙͘h̶̬͝ě̷̥ ̷̗̔Ź̶͍ȏ̸̰n̶̮͒ẽ̵̩?̶̺͐”.

She instinctively flings the skull into the ceiling, it falling to the ground, squishing a little, and rolling a bit before she cautiously picks it back up. That… that was vaguely English, she thinks? she understood that. Her dad’s wince is almost audible, “I hope that’s all it was”, before sounding to go back to the living room again.

Then… the skull speaks up again; or Phantom speaks she supposes, “O̷h̶ ̶g̸e̸e̸z̷ ̶w̷h̴y̷ ̴a̴m̸ ̷I̶ ̴a̸ ̸m̷e̵s̴s̵?̷”.

Closer to English, good for him; this is a nightmare. She is having a goddamn conversation with a disembodied skull. “I am deeply disturbed, Phantom”.

Apparently It doesn’t like that response, “W̶h̷y̵ ̵i̸s̸ ̷m̸y̶ ̵h̷a̸n̴d̸ w̶r̴o̶n̴g̵?̸ W̴h̴e̴r̷e̶ ̴t̷h̸e̸ ̶f̴u̷c̶k̷ ̴I̶S̸ ̶m̷y̵ h̵a̵n̵d̸ a̴c̵t̴u̶a̶l̷l̷y̵?̶ W̴h̸y̷ ̵i̵s̸ ̵n̸o̴t̸h̸i̵n̵g̶ at̸t̵a̸c̷h̶e̶d̷?̸ ̴W̸h̷y̸ ̸i̸s̵ ̵m̴y̸ ̸a̵r̶m̵ ̸b̷e̷i̵n̶g̶ ̵s̴t̸a̸b̷b̷e̵d̴ ̷b̴y̵ ̸a̷ ̶f̷u̸c̸k̷i̷n̴g̷ ̶d̴e̸s̷k̴?̵ ̸B̴y̶ ̸t̸h̴e̵ ̵A̶n̴c̷i̷e̷n̷t̸s̷,̵ ̵V̵a̷l̸?̵”. She just stares for a beat, letting Phantom continue, “w̵h̶y̴ ̵d̵o̸e̷s̷ ̴i̷t̸ ̷f̵e̵e̷l̴ ̶l̶i̶k̷e̷ ̸o̶n̷e̴ ̴o̷f̶ ̶m̴y̶ f̸e̸e̷t̴ i̷s̴ ̸b̵e̸i̶n̸g̶ ̴b̵o̸i̴l̸e̵d̸?̵ ̴W̵h̵y̴ ̶d̴o I̷ h̶a̶v̶e̸ ̸f̵o̵u̴r̷ ̶f̵e̷e̴t̸!̵”.

She hopes by ‘four feet’ he means the ghostly tail that’s still laying limp on the floor. “Excuse you, I’ve spent multiple hours stitching you back together like a nightmarish puzzle. Zone I even rescued your sorry ass from the whack jobs carrying you off in garbage bags”. This conversation should be starting with a thank you as far as she’s concerned; she slapped It back together from something that damn well should have ended the ghost.

While the skull stays silent Valerie pulls out the face skin with as few fingers as possible, she might as well have this conversation with a proper damn face and not a freaking skull. Zone. She feels like she’s being judged as she just kind of tugs the skin down over the skull and prods it to move it where it’s more or less supposed to be.

She’s very glad the skin does actually snap or suck back on this time, as if it had never been off to begin with.

…

Phantom’s mouth opens again, the fact that Its still toothless is not a good look, almost as disturbing as being faceless, when combined with the lack of eyes. “D̷i̷d̴ ̷y̸o̴u̶ ̴j̴u̷s̷t̵ ̵p̴u̸l̶l̷ ̵m̷y̵ ̴s̷k̶i̵n̵ ̵b̵a̵c̸k̵ ̸o̷n̷?̵”.

There’s honestly not much she can say to that, “yup”.

“h̴u̶h̵”.

“Yeah”.

“t̷h̶a̵t̸’̷s̶,̴ ̷u̴h̸,̸ ̸p̷r̸e̸t̴t̶y̷ ̷f̵u̴c̸k̴e̸d̴ u̶p̴ ac̶t̵u̵a̵l̵l̵y̴”.

Valerie rolls her eyes, bleeding sarcasm, “you think?”, leaning over to grab an eye with a grimace, she’s got questions about how the actual fuck it’s actively leaking out ectoplasm. It’s completely covering her fingers and dripping down her arm onto the ground. “You’re getting an eye back too”.

“C̴o̸o̶l̶ ̷b̶e̸a̶n̶s̷”.

Valerie gapes a little at him, what the fuck kind of response is that? Here have back your eye that was removed from its eye socket by probable psychos. Oh that’s neat thanks for the solid, man. Stupid stupid Phantom. She basically rams the eye back in without any degree of precision, “screw you!”.

Phantom makes faces as the eye seems to, ugh, resettle. “f̸i̵r̶s̸t̶ ̵y̶o̴u̵ ̴s̵t̸a̴b̸ ̴m̴y̷ ̵c̶o̸r̷e̵,̴ ̵t̴h̷e̴n̶ ̵y̵o̷u̸ ̵s̵t̴a̸b̵ m̷e̶ w̸i̴t̵h̸ ̴m̸y̴ ̶o̸w̴n̸ ̴e̴y̸e̴!̶”.

“You say that like it’s something that regularly happens to people”.

“D̴o̸e̶s̵n̶’̴t̵ ̸i̶t̸”.

Valerie practically growls at the gaul of It, “no! Things that kill people don’t regularly happen to them, you twat!”. Why did Phantom have to be so damn insufferable sometimes. She grabs Its other eye a bit more aggressively than is necessary. “Do you want your other eye back or not”.

It glares at her with Its one attached eye, “N̴o̵t̴ ̴i̴f̷ ̶y̷o̶u̴’̸r̷e̵ ̵g̸o̸i̷n̴g̷ ̷t̵o̸ as̵s̵a̷u̵l̷t̷ /m̴e̵ ̸w̸i̶t̴h̴ ̴i̸t̷ ̷a̴g̶a̷i̷n̴”.

What kind of person or ghost just says ‘naw I’ll pass on having both eyes’??? She absolutely rams the eye in while Phantom shrieks in annoyance at her. Fuck him and fuck his annoyance too.

They just glare at each other for a while before Valerie huffs, scowling, “why am I still holding you, you suck”. Turning and throwing Phantoms head at the torso mound like she’s trying to slam it down.

It makes a loud squishing noise and indents into the torso mound some. Phantom speaking, muffled, “r̵u̶d̵e̶,̶ ̷b̶u̸t̶ ̶a̷c̸c̵e̴p̷t̵a̴b̵l̸e̵”.

She has no idea what he means by that, until the torso mound fucking squirms and starts globulating and reforming grotesquely like something out of a hard core eldritch body horror flick. There’s strings of almost starry gore scrapping against and snapping on to things, definite organs literally slapping into each other, stomach bile? squelching around black ribs in granules before settling, muscle fibre stretching unendingly and almost crushing in bone and ectoplasm. The ghostly tail slithering across the ground like the snake in the garden of eden itself to reattach to the severed lower section of torso, respawning to Its familiar legs; the normalcy of that particular change is more unsettling than it has any right to be.

She is strongly resisting the urge to vomit, it’s a fucking blessing when It’s suit reforms in perfect condition over the torso and neck. Phantoms back arching backwards in a stretch, head and neck craning back then forward then around with loud cracks. It rolls Its shoulders, with nothing attached to them, before looking over Its shoulder back at her, “I̷ ̴a̵m̴ ̵n̷o̴ ̸l̶o̵n̴g̶e̷r̸ ̷b̸o̶d̸i̸l̴e̶s̵s̴”, tilting Its head, “o̸r̸ ̶n̶o̵ ̶l̶o̶n̷g̶e̴r̸ ̶h̵e̵a̴d̸l̵e̷s̴s̷,̶ ̴d̴e̸p̷e̴n̴d̵i̵n̶g̴ ̸o̸n̸ ̴h̴o̶w̸ ̷y̶o̶u̵ ̵l̸o̵o̴k̸ ̵a̶t̷ ̶i̷t̴”.

She almost squeaks at him, “I didn't want to see that at all”. Scratch out everything she said about all the other horrific horror bullshit she’s seen tonight, that was the most nightmarish thing she’s ever seen and she will be having nightmares tonight, Zone she’ll be having them for the next week.

It levels her with a flat glare, “I̴’̴d̴ ̷s̴a̴y̸ ̶s̵o̵r̷r̸y̸ ̵b̸u̷t̸ ̸y̵o̷u̴ ̷p̷u̸n̷c̵h̶e̷d̴ ̴m̶e̴ ̷w̸i̷t̶h̴ ̴m̴y̴ ̶o̸w̸n̵ ̷e̴y̵e̵,̷ ̵t̸w̷i̷c̴e̷”.

She glares back and wheezes in pure disgust. Phantom nodding its head at the strapped down arm with a hand, clearly expecting her to go get it for the ghost. She is having none of that, “get it your damn self, you utter nightmare fuel”. Their glaring match goes on for a bit before she huffs and gets up, unstrapping the hand arm and giving It over by smacking the ghost over the head with it. Phantom managing to bite onto the wrist and muffle growl at her for hitting It; doesn’t stop glaring though, looking from the arm stump to Its shoulder stump then to her.

…

Is it not just going to reattach like the… torso? Fuck her luck, “do you need me to stitch it back on?”.

It nods happily, almost grinning like a damn puppy.

… Guess she’s doing this again, stupid Phantom for being like this. She huffs but does shuffle over to work on stitching the arm, Phantom holding it up with his mouth all the while; at least now it looks like It’s healing is helping the process along now.

Phantom dropping Its wrist out of Its mouth, “n̸i̸c̶e̴”.

Was that almost a thank you or is she hallucinating?

The ghost raises Its eyebrows at Its hand as it opens and closes, flexing, the wrong goddamn way because it’s on the wrong goddamn arm; before just shoving Its hand into Its head.

…There comes a point where disturbing shit just kind of stops being disturbing, you get to point where it’s just ‘ah okay this shit again. Fantastic’ and at least Phantom shoving Its hands into Itself suddenly wasn’t super new behaviour. It keep that thermos in Its stomach half the time for Zones sake. Phantom pulling a blue orb out of the front of Its face is goddamn new though, her watching as It promptly shoves the orb in Its chest.

Then, because apparently It wasn’t done being a pain, the handless arm and jarred foot go intangible, escaping their confines, and zip over to Phantom to reattach. Followed by Phantom biting off Its hand and sort of maneuvering it onto the left arm, right hard reforming from right arm stump out of thin air; the other foot also reforming from nothing.

Valerie blinks, speaking blandly, “well at least I know why I never found the other hand”. At least that means It did actually damage Its dominate hand more. “And what? Too lazy to go get the run away foot?”.

Phantom rolls Its eyes, “har har, I’m not reattached something that’s been basically boiled to a crisp in what I think is some guys stove top pot. Let the have my ecto blood as a broth additive”. She can only nod in acquiescence. Then It gets that stupid soft gentle ‘I care’ look that pulls at her heartstrings, before outright hugging her.

What?

It pats her back gently, “thanks a lot, really. Thanks so much. I’m fine, I’m whole; it’s okay for you to stop shaking now or for you to throw up if you need to-”.

She was shaking? When? How hadn’t she noticed?

“-I can summon you a shock blanket if you don’t have one. Or a soothing tea maybe?”, mumbling more to himself, “I’m sure Nocturne wouldn’t mind me taking some. They’d probably be happy, since they always say both of use are always too stung out and don’t sleep enough”.

She kinda hates that that would probably actually be a good idea, because all of this was all kinds of fucked up and supremely disturbing in every sense of the word; and the energy drinks were coming back to kick her in the ass. Had she even finished the Monster? Probably not. That was a waste right?

Phantom stops hugging her, leaning back but putting his hands on her shoulders, watching her face and tilting his head curiously, “you better? Better enough at least?”.

She fucking throws up right on his lap. Yeah okay, disturbing stomach churning shit, plus apparent mild possible shock, plus nerves about fixing a horrifically injured battle buddy, plus excessive caffeine, was maybe not the best idea she’s ever had. And Phantom be a gentle asshole rather kills her spite fuelled pride.

Her wheezing and whipping her mouth, while Phantom furrows his eyebrows together and purses his lips, “yeah. Yeah that’s- that’s fair. I definitely deserved that”.

“Fuck you”.

Phantom snorts at that but at least stops holding her shoulders. It leaning back on his hands and staring unseeingly at the wall, “I guess you probably want an explanation for the horror show I dump on you”.

Honestly? No. No she does not. That’s reasonable she thinks. Yet a stupid part of her is filled with that stupid morbid curiosity. Also, yeah, she definitely is shaking and she doesn’t know if that’s shock, adrenaline, or caffeine.

…

There’s also a blanket on her shoulders that definitely wasn’t there before. Stupid Phantom. Stupid stupid Phantom. He puts her through a fucking medical nightmare, then a body horror visual metric ton of nightmare, than has the audacity to be nice and kind and gentle. Zone she hates him… that’s a lie obviously but still…

Her swallowing, “the blue orb?”. That was at least something that won’t be horrifying, hopefully.

He grins and his eye light up, clearly happy to not talk about the shit that happened to him which was probably traumatizing, him turning to look back at her, “ah! yeah I guess you would have no clue what a core looks like, huh?”, shrugging loosely, “I’m sure Maddie and Jack have explained them some. Think heart and brain and lungs and bone marrow and everything”, pointingat his chest then to his head, “I moved my to my head to protect it”.

… All she can really think to say to that is, “well at least you protected yourself for a change”.

“Ouch, cut deep why don’tcha?”, and he grins stupidly, laughing a little.

She’s baffled how It can laugh at all after all this bullshit? She somewhat fixed him but everything she ‘fixed’ was things that were done to him. Scowling without any real feeling, “how are you not freaking out”.

His smile wavers a little but he shrugs anyways, “I’ve been through a lot, Val”.

“Don’t call me that”.

It actually winces, “right, sorry”, rubbing Its neck, “though yeah, getting dismembered by a ghost body part trafficking ring was a new, and very unpleasant, one”.

Zone fuck she was joking when she thought up fucking organ trafficing as a why for all this crap. Glaring, “seriously”.

Phantom smirks, “what can I say? It’s an Ancients be damned weird world. It’s tied to some cultural or religious thing, don’t quote me on that, that thinks wearing or consuming ghostly parts and ‘true ghost ectoplasm’ is healing and empowering. Yeah, it’s fucked up”.

Both of them jump at her dad suddenly interrupting on the other side of the door, “still okay in there?”.

Phantom just looks confused while Valerie shakes herself off some, “yeah dad, Phantom just came back around and is, you know, explaining”.

The man’s relieved sigh is extremely audible, “good. Good. Remember what I said though, you and me and Phantom and tea. Okay?”.

She sighs, “yeah, I know”, and starts pulling off the blanket to fold on her lap. Fuck she’s exhausted and doesn’t want to deal with this, but it’s her dad and she doesn’t want him to fret. Meanwhile Phantom is glancing around and eyeballing the ectoplasmic mess straight out of a slasher flick and wincing; eyeing her up and down and again wincing. She knew she looked a mess alright? No need to be a dick about it. Besides, he looked worse. So much worse, holy fuck.

Her dad humming, “good, will you both be out soon?”.

Phantom clears his throat, “yeah sure, I wouldn’t call myself super presentable quite yet though, so give me a beat, yeah?”.

“Of course! No worries, just sooner rather than later. Please”.

Both of the local town heroes wince at that, giving matching, “okay”’s before her dad walks away again. Her eyeing Phantom as he stands up with a bit of a grunt. Her frowning, “are you good?”.

His laugh is a little bitter and hollow, “I’m one part reformed mangled flesh soup and one part enough stitching to make me a patchwork doll. Not a chance in the entire Zone am I ‘okay’”, him kneeing down by some of the ectoplasmic mess, “but I’ll be okay, eventually. And there’s a gnarly mess to clean up and a worried father to placate”.

She blinks at him, confused, “mess to-?”, and cuts herself off at seeing all the ectoplasm splattered and smeared and coagulated around start pulsing and flowing to and seemingly inside of Phantom. What the actual fuck??? “What the fuck Phantom”.

The ghost shrugs, not looking back to her, “yes I can reabsorb my lost ecto, it’s just really not efficient or worth the effort. I produce and absorb ecto quick enough to replace whatever I’ve lost that it’s redundant to absorb what I’ve lost”.

Valerie shakes her head and forces herself to get up too, “what a technical way to say you’re over powered”. Which results in his cheeks instantly lighting up green, much to her amusement. He’s… actually okay-ish by some fucking stroke of pure luck.

Phantom clears his throat and points at her, making general gestures to her entire body, “well, ah, Amity’s also my lair so that helps”.

She scowls at It, “fuck you, again”, sighing and glancing down at herself, “if you think I’m going down and having tea with my father while covered in your ectoplasm, you’re kidding yourself”. At least he chuckles at that before poking her and seemingly absorbing his ecto. Fucking small mercies she guesses, since she wasn’t sure what to even do about the mess at all. “Some dripped down into Karen and Kevin apartment, they were bitching”.

“Fuck Karen and Kevin”.

She snorts at that which just results in both of them chuckling a little manically. Phantom gesturing to the door, “shall we?”, then shaking his head, “we need therapy”.

Valerie shakes her head to but moves towards the door, “so much therapy”. “Hey I’m supposed to be the issue, stop copying me”; there’s too much genuine sadness in than to make it really passable as a joke. At least the jackass wasn’t floating or anything, that always made him feel a little less inhuman; which was probably the point. That and the ghost was apparently still right shit, as he fucking deserved to be after the crap he just put her through.

Damian smiles and waves at both of them as they enter the living room/kitchen/dining room area (small apartments, am I right?), “so what do you want, I’ve got elderberry, chamomile, lavender berry….”.

As he continues to list on, both smile at him, it’s a little faked and the calm postures are a bit forced, but it’s something. Something tells her that Phantom’s is just a little bit less faked than hers though, which… just makes her pity the ghost more.

End

[ecto-american]

White and Nerdy

Holiday Truce Gift for @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy based on their request for Vlad’s slice of life outside of the Fentons.

On FFN and AO3

Summary: Contrary to belief, Vlad does have hobbies other than spinning in a fancy chair with his cat thinking of evil plots. For example, every Tuesday he dedicates the day to hanging out with his best friend as they both indulged in their crippling, long term addictions: World of Warcraft, with a pinch of Dungeons and Dragons.

Rating: K+

Warnings: Some cursing

Other Notes: Everybody is gay or trans, and you can't stop me.

Running a multi billion dollar empire was stressful, to say the very least. And of course, when you own those businesses, it was easy to work as much or as little as you pleased. Not that Vlad ever found himself taking off too much from work. No, no. He loved running his empire, the meetings and decisions. Whenever he took too much time off, the halfa found himself restless. Vlad craved a full schedule, and he needed things to look forward to.

Though of course, he wasn't all work and no play. There was one day of the week Vlad always, with the exception of business trips, took off or would take easy: Tuesdays. Tuesday was raid day.

And on that Tuesday morning, Vlad paid no mind as he could faintly hear the front door being unlocked and closed. His best friend, his actual best friend (NOT that fool Jack), had keys and was permitted to come over whenever he pleased.

Vlad continued his morning routine lazily, carefully shaving and grooming his beard to his preferred style. Brushed and styled his hair in it's normal ponytail, and he dressed himself. Any other day of the week, Vlad would be putting on his Italian brand name custom suits, always freshly pressed and ironed by a maid. But today was raid day, and so he instead was wearing sweatpants and an oversized Packers sweatshirt. He slipped on his football slippers, and he went downstairs to his computer room.

Not his office, which was expensively decorated with only the most fine and formal, shelves lined with important titles. His computer room, which was expensively decorated for a whole other reason. As he opened the door, he smiled at the shelves full of figurines of his favorite characters, accessories adorning the walls. He knew that most would have a stroke, since he never kept anything in the original box, despite having the entire collection of figurines, statues, busts, everything that would make the most dedicated fan drooling. That was simply stupid in Vlad's eyes, it was made to be admired and displayed, not kept in a box. If any were to break, he could simply buy another, no issue.

They lined shelves that were all over the brightly lit room, with cabinets below that held their boxes. While he didn't keep them in boxes, he of course, still kept them. There were also some books, mostly related to the lore but also game guides and manuals.

He admired his collection for a moment before turning his attention to the middle aged man getting comfortable in one of the three computer setups Vlad had, the far left one. All the setups were, of course, only the best and most advanced, with each desktop having three monitors and leather chairs. Each desk was a large U shaped one, set pressed to each other and near the back wall for the outlets.

"Hey, morning!" Edward Lancer greeted him warmly. Both men were morning people, clear by their chosen professions and schedules. Ed was in his own lounge wear, sweatpants with crocs and an old college t-shirt. "I brought McDonald's." He gestured to the bag that was left on Vlad's desk, alongside a cup of coffee clearly from Vlad's own kitchen.

Had it been any person other than Ed, Vlad would have been mortified over McDonald's. But even billionaires couldn't resist their breakfast, and it was only on Tuesday that he was able to privately indulge. Ed never judged.

"Thank you!" Vlad replied brightly. Ed had his own meal in front of him, sitting facing away from the keyboard as he took his time eating. Vlad joined him, sitting at his desk and doing the same, allowing them to talk face to face as they ate.

"Are you ready to fight the dragon later?" Ed questioned as he cut up his pancakes. "Since we're resting, I've been trying to figure out what spells I should prepare for the day to fight it." Vlad snorted, shaking his head.

"Knowing Harriet, she'll likely make the dragon a red herring that goes down with ease and dick us over with the actual boss that'll be invincible to half our party because it's immune the attacks that destroy the damn dragon," Vlad replied before taking a big sip of coffee. Burning hot, but delicious. Ed chuckled in amusement.

"She's always made it fair though," Ed replied. "Her boss battles are never unbeatable."

"Yeah, but she makes every campaign some Water Temple level meets 90s point and click mystery game difficulty and outrageous puzzle solving," Vlad grumbled.

"I like it, it's good critical thinking practice," Ed replied. "I've used some of her puzzles in the games I DM for the students. Really makes them think rather than just attacking everything. I swear, one of my students, Nathan, he just loves rolling to attack every NPC I make."

"Sounds like a ninny," Vlad said as he took a bite of his greasy fast food. The best part about the summer was Ed not having to teach. They could dedicate the whole day to hanging out. Of course, Ed took up a summer job, but he was able to secure Tuesdays off.

"A bit, but a good kid," Ed always spoke fondly of his students. "You should come in sometime for a game, it'd be fun."

"I think I might," Vlad agreed thoughtfully.

Of course, going to Casper High was always hit or miss. Daniel was there, and it was always nice to be able to check in on the little badger. But as mayor and a billionaire that funded several scholarships, it would be nice publicity to go and have some face time with kids. Many of his high school interns had graduated and left for college, and he was in the market for some new ones. Might be able to find some promising new future employees too. Hm, he'd have to see where he could fit a Casper High visit into his schedule when school began. Vlad would worry about that another time.

"How's their gay club?" Vlad questioned. "You guys just formed one, right?"

"It's got a steady group of kids who come in, very good kids. Many have supportive parents now," Ed explained. The teacher had paused, giving a small sigh. "It's a double edge sword for me. On one hand, I'm so grateful that so many of them can be who they are. But...I don't know. I hate that we never got to have that."

Vlad nodded understandingly. He poked at his breakfast, feeling hunger temporarily leave him as those depressive memories came back.

"I'll forever be thankful that Mother wanted to apologize and make amends before she died," Vlad spoke. "But I'm sorry she missed out on so much because of what I had to do to become happy. At least she passed away recognizing me as her son."

The last memories of his mother was depressing. Elderly and sick with cancer, even with all the money Vlad began to throw at her once she reached out to him after nearly twenty years of refusing to speak to him. Whether his sister wore her down, or it was deathbed regrets. It was an emotional two years, being able to see his mom again.

"Mine's in better shape than me, and they're still calling me by my old name," Ed complained. "I don't think it'll ever change. I try to keep a relationship, cause of the kids, but I don't know if it's even worth it anymore."

Silence hung in the air as they separately mourned for what it all cost them. Of course, it was worth it. Absolutely worth it to be happy, to be comfortable and finally as they should be, but it didn't make the cost any less harsh of a price to pay.

"Their generation will be better," Vlad said firmly. Ed nodded in agreement. "Please let me know if any of them need binders or anything of the sorts."

"I will. I've been thinking about starting a clothing drive for them," Ed explained. "I can probably get the school on board with it if we market it as for the lower income students too. Dressing how you want makes a big difference."

"You get the details sorted out, and I will absolutely financially back you," Vlad promised. Ed smiled.

"Thank you. I may start working on that to propose for this school year," Ed mused.

For the bumbling oaf that Jack was, Vlad had to admit that he was a very loving and caring man. A bit too caring, honestly, it was a bit of a flaw. He had immediately accepted Vlad, and later on his own son. It always warmed him to remember that Daniel had two parents that had immediately gotten him everything a young trans man could ever need. No hesitation, no questioning.

Ed took a final bite of his breakfast before humming happily. He wiped his hands as he pushed to toss his empty containers into the trash can.

"Enough being sad, let's raid," he suggested. Vlad hurriedly took his last two bites before nodding in agreement.

123456789

The raid was broken up with greasy Chinese takeout for lunch, brought to them by a staff. Another guilty pleasure Vlad rarely indulged in. Then, of course, it was a return to games before they changed into their normal attire, sitting down to a home cooked dinner by staff. By the time they were finishing up, their other guests had begun to arrive for the evening plans.

Vlad always hosted the game. It just always made the most sense. He had the most room in his house, nor the distractions of family. Not that he disliked Lance nor Ed's children, they were great, but there was nothing that ruined the immersion of dragon slaying quite like teenage dramatics. And he thought that playing with toddlers in the house was frustrating.

The four sat in yet another room in Vlad's mansion that he had dedicated fully to the hobby. A large round table with Harriet Chin sitting furthest from them. A DM folder that separated her papers from there, just low enough that the halfa could see her smirking to herself as she reviewed her plans. Ed sat to her left, with an empty seat in between them. Another empty seat in between him and Vlad, and yet another separated Vlad from Lance Thunder.

Vlad honestly didn't really know the man that well yet. He was one of Harriet's coworkers that she had dragged into the summer game, as Vlad and Ed needed a third person in the party for this campaign. Their normal fourth and fifth friends, Joe and Frank, were spending the summer with their daughter and their newborn granddaughter. He already missed the pair terribly, especially Frank. Frank would often join in on their World of Warcraft adventures. But Lance was gay, and that made him okay enough for Vlad to accept him into their little queer circle with little complaint.

"I wouldn't get her a car unless she had good grades," Vlad gave his two cents into the conversation. Something about Lance's daughter wanting a car. Lance nodded.

"That's what I've been saying, but Alan keeps saying that if Star had her own car, she could begin driving herself to the library and to school to study, but I just don't buy that," Lance agreed. Vlad knew by now who those people were. Alan was Lance's husband, Star was Lance's daughter from his first marriage. Vlad had seen pictures of Star before. She was a spitting image of Lance. "She's more interested in being with her friends."

"And what does Rene think?" Ed questioned about the ex-wife's opinion. Lance shrugged.

"She doesn't think Star needs a car," Lance replied. "Public transportation isn't bad here, she can always borrow one of our cars, and lots of colleges won't let you have cars as a freshman anyway. So it'd be sitting in the driveway in a year or so for a year anyway."

"Star's going to be a junior, right?" Vlad questioned. Lance nodded. Vlad mentally went over his garage of cars. "When she's able to have a car on her college campus, I'll happily give her a good deal on one of my cars if she has good grades. I'll probably be retiring one of my cars by then. Of course, it's not going to be some beat up piece of junk." Lance's eyes widened.

"I'll definitely keep that in mind," Lance smiled warmly at him.

"Vlad sold my oldest, Ophelia, a car about five years ago. Car still runs like it's new," Ed spoke up.

"Ophelia just began graduate school, didn't she?" Harriet questioned, finally speaking up. She had been nose deep in her campaign notes. Ed nodded.

"She got in at the University of Chicago, full ride," Ed beamed with pride, and Vlad was very proud too. Ophelia, his precious goddaughter, was like a niece to him. Very smart, quick-witted and the only one who could match Ed's passion for literature. Of course, Vlad provided her with that full ride scholarship, as he did with her younger siblings, and eventually he would do the same for Ed's remaining two when they got to that point. No niece or nephew of his was going to college with student debts. "George is set to graduate soon too, this is his last year. Before med school anyway."

Ahh, little Georgie. Vlad got to spend a lot of time with him. He was one of Vlad's interns at Axion Labs. A strong willed boy, good head on his shoulders. Sometimes a little too honest, but the world needed more people like that. Whenever the billionaire stopped by Axion Labs, he always paid a visit to his favorite intern. It was always those times he spent with Ed's children that Vlad regretted not having his own.

"So how's the cat, Vlad?" Harriet asked, giving a small smirk. She could always seem to sniff out his emotions. Damn journalists. They were a bit too observant. Vlad rolled his eyes.

"How's yours?" he asked back. She chuckled.

"Bandit's the happiest boy alive, I just got him a nice new cat tower," she replied. Vlad nodded.

"I just had a new cat house for Maggie built," Vlad told her. Of course, he was never going to admit to his friends, most of them knowing the ghost huntress, that he named his cat after a long term crush. "It's going to be installed in the next week or so. You should bring Bandit over then. Maggie loves him."

"Oh I might," Harriet hummed happily. "It's been a while since Bandit got to hang out with Maggie."

"Does anybody want a drink before we begin?" Vlad questioned.

"Can I have a glass of rosé wine?" Harriet questioned. The billionaire smirked.

"Of course," he replied. He glanced to Ed and Lance.

"Uh, just gimme a beer, you know what I like," Ed shrugged. Lance thought for a moment.

"I may just have some wine too," Lance spoke.

Vlad nodded, and he stood to go to the intercom on the wall. All of the rooms in his house had it for his staff. He pushed it, and he requested the drinks, alongside what he knew to be choice snacks.

Almost as soon as Vlad had sat down, a male staff member came with a tray. It was full of cheese and crackers, popcorn, chips and fondue. Another staff member came with drinks and glasses.

Vlad picked up a beer like Ed, cracking it open and taking a long drink. Of course, in any other company, he'd indulge in wine. Beer was not something one could normally drink at a formal business function, and so he always took advantage of the times he could freely have some.

They began. A small discussion, and as the billionaire expected, the dragon went down easy. Suspiciously easy. Harriet gave the group before her a mischievous grin just over her DM folder. Vlad didn't like this, or that look in her eye.

"So you guys defeated the dragon," the reporter replied slyly. "But there's no loot to collect on him. The dragon dissolves and melts away. Everybody roll for perception and add your stuff. Then tell me what you got."

Oh, he definitely did not like this a single bit. Vlad eyed her coldly as he picked up his dice. Ed and Lance did the same.

"Visual or hearing, I'm missing an eye so I'd have to roll disadvantage otherwise," Ed reminded her.

"Hearing!" Harriet chirped. He nodded.

"Uh, sixteen then," he replied.

"Ten," Lance said.

"Twenty-two," Vlad spoke.

"You hear nothing," Harriet told Lance, pointing to him. She moved her finger to Ed. "You hear a small noise, two voices. But they're a bit muffle, you can't quite make out the entire conversation. But you do hear some words. The general jist of the conversation you can make out is that these individuals have realized you killed the dragon and are here." Harriet pointed to Vlad. "You! However, you can hear everything. It's a rough voice of a masculine figure telling somebody to prepare for battle, somebody has killed their precious dragon. They're going to detect your thoughts to determine your next movements before making their next move."

"I cast detect magic," Vlad replied. Harriet's eyes sparkled.

"It failed," she announced gleefully. Vlad internally groaned, and he could see Ed looking confused. "So what will you guys do."

Lance scratched his temple as he stared at his character sheet. He was not just new to the group, but to the game itself. The weather man studied his sheet for a moment as he tried to think. He took a long sip of his wine before speaking.

"Well uh, I think my guy is just gonna look for the treasure, cause I didn't hear anything," Lance said slowly. "And I'm still really interested in the promised gold."

"I tell him to not, because we should be careful," Ed spoke up quickly. "Because of what I heard."

"You tell your party what you heard?" Harriet questioned. She had leaned back in her seat, a leg over the arm of the chair as she held her beverage. The lesbian lightly swirled her wine in her glass before taking a long drink.

"Yeah, I tell my party what I heard," Ed clarified.

"And I'll tell them what I heard," Vlad agreed. "Because I need these people alive to keep me alive. They're my meat shields." Harriet snickered.

"So the prince never mentioned anything but a dragon being in here," Ed said slowly. "It must be another adventuring party trying to get the treasure. Prince Yamum said he did send several people to collect the family amulet."

"I say we kill them," Vlad suggested. Ed looked at him in disapproval, and Vlad shrugged. "My character's selfish. He doesn't want to share the loot with this party, and he doesn't want to share the rewards for returning the amulet."

"I agree," Lance said slowly. "My guy doesn't want the competition."

"No, no!" Ed said sternly. "We are NOT killing him, he may have useful information for us or be able to help."

"There's two voices, so that's a five way split between treasure," Lance pointed out. Vlad glanced to see Harriet's reaction. She was grinning like a fool, with that distinctive sparkle in her eye. She was absolutely up to something, and she looked like a true super villain. Evil plots forming her mind. Vlad trusted her with nothing, and yet he admired this chaotic evil lesbian. Harriet was his villain goals.

"Harriet, I swear on your grave," Vlad began his threat, only to stop with a frown at Harriet's devilish giggle.

"The individual detects your negative and violent thoughts," she announced cheerfully. She finished off her glass, shifting to have both legs over the armrest, her back against the opposite one. "And they have deduced that you're a threat that needs to be taken care of. Congratulations, boys. You're encountering the real boss." Vlad scowled.

"I knew you were going to do this, you always pull some weird bait and switch thing!" Vlad complained. Harriet smirked. "Lemme guess. It's a, it's a, god what would be the worst thing to fight right now." Vlad racked his mind for a possible enemy. "A rakshasa? Probably with a shield guardian too."

Harriet's smirk only widened. And Vlad knew he was correct.

"Roll for initiative, bitch."

[lexiepiper]

Unread

Dani visits the human world and notices some things that have changed since the last time she was there.

Phic Phight Prompt by @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy

Summary: What is there to say?

Dani slipped through the Fenton portal into the world of the living, and was immediately greeted by the feeling of cool air on her skin. She took a deep breath, hovering invisibly in the middle of the lab and slowly cherishing the sensation of fresh, living air filling her lungs.

The lab was… quiet. She frowned and spun on the spot, confirming that she was the only person there. The monitors lining the benches were dull, and there were no typical flashing lights or whirring electronics. The only illumination came from the portal. Dani didn’t know a lot about other people’s labs, but Vlad’s had always been full of soft noise, as machines hummed and blipped little tunes that had always soothed her back to sleep.

She pushed the memory away. Maybe the Fentons’ lab was just quiet when nobody was there? After all, it wasn’t like there were growing life forms that needed constant support and monitoring.

Still. It didn’t quite seem to fit the glimpses of this place that she’d had in the past, no matter how fleeting they’d been.

She phased through the ceiling, and the darkness was replaced by soft natural light that streamed through open windows. The glimpse of sunlight struck her with unexpected surprise, and Dani hissed in a sharp breath as her core hummed deep within her centre. She suddenly wanted nothing more than to fly out into the open sky, feeling the wind in her hair and the sun soaking into her skin for the first time in… wait, how long had it actually been?

She frowned, scrunching her face as she tried to track how long she’d been in the Ghost Zone. Surely it hadn’t been more than a few months, right?

Shaking her head to clear it, she glanced around the living room. Unease prickled down her spine, dampening her good mood, but Dani couldn’t quite place what was wrong. There was that same old couch and rug, a TV against one wall, and framed photos lining the mantelpiece. 

She was surprised that Danny hadn’t appeared yet. Shouldn’t she have set off his ghost sense by now?

Dani’s heart pounded against her ribcage as she floated up again, phasing through the floor of Danny’s bedroom…

This was Danny’s room, right? No, she must have misjudged the layout of the home. It appeared to be a guest room, with a plain mattress devoid of blankets or sheets on the bed frame, and empty shelves lining the walls with a clear desk tucked in the corner. The curtains were drawn, but they were so threadbare that there was no problem seeing in the bright daylight that shone right through.

She phased through the wall, and ended up in a room with a decidedly teal colour scheme. The curtains were closed in here too but enough light filtered through to make out the details anyway. It was as neat as one of those pictures of perfect homes in magazines, and the framed high school diploma above the study alcove suggested that the room belonged to Jazz. Or… it had? The air felt stale and dusty, like nobody had been in here in a while. Dani drifted over to the dresser and ran her finger across the top, coming away with a fine layer of dust.

She pinched her lower lip between her teeth. Jazz had been pretty close to graduation when Dani had gone into the Ghost Zone, so maybe she was at university now?

Yeah. That made sense.

Unease settled more densely over her, and Dani phased through the wall again. She passed through the linen cupboard and a bathroom in desperate need of a good clean, and then found herself in what was obviously Danny’s parents’ room. This one finally appeared to be lived in, with the duvet crumpled and left unmade, and glasses of water on bedside tables. The curtains were open in here, and the air felt fresher and less dead.

Dani didn’t really want to poke around through Maddie and Jack’s stuff, so she phased back out into the hallway. She tilted her head, scowling as she counted the doors in the hallway.

There were exactly five — one for each bedroom, and one for the bathroom and the linen cupboard.

Dread dropped into her gut, like she’d suddenly swallowed a bowling ball, and Dani crept back into the first room. She pulled back the curtains, and dust motes swirled in the beams of sunlight as the room was fully illuminated. She stood in the middle of the carpet, turning in a slow circle and reaching out tentatively with her core.

There were slightly darker rectangles on the wall where there used to be posters of star charts and band tours, and when she tilted her head back, Dani could just make out the tiny silhouettes where glow in the dark stars had once been stuck to the ceiling and the white paint had faded around them.

She couldn’t sense any other ghosts beside herself. There wasn’t so much as a glimmer of residual spectral activity aside from the steady hum of the portal two floors beneath her.

“Where are you?” she whispered into the still emptiness.

Maybe… maybe she’d been gone longer than she’d thought. Maybe Danny had graduated and gone to college too. She didn’t think he’d have abandoned Amity Park, but maybe he’d moved out with Tucker, or finally gotten together with Sam or Valerie and was living with them? She didn’t really know much about his friends, but that seemed like the kind of thing they’d do, especially if Danny’s parents didn’t know his secret yet. He was probably just too far across town for her to sense.

Dani shot up through the ceiling and broke into the open air. The sunlight enveloped her with sudden life, and despite everything she smiled and gave a deep sigh. The Ghost Zone had been interesting, and it certainly helped to keep her core stable, but her human half delighted in the chance to soak in the energy of the mortal world once more.

Making sure that she stayed invisible, Dani floated above the town in a huge, lazy loop, feeling for any sign of Danny. There was a gentle breeze, and she revelled in the way it stirred her hair and brushed against her exposed skin.

By the time she’d returned to Fentonworks, the contentment of being in the human world had once again been overrun by anxiety.

Dani debated dropping by Valerie’s house, before realising that she didn’t actually know where it was. She scowled, but after a moment of thought began to fly across the town again, this time with a clear destination in mind.

She touched down in the parking lot behind the library, using invisibility to mask herself as she changed into her human form before walking through the front doors just like any normal kid. Nobody even glanced her way, and Dani sidled over to the row of thick computer screens that buzzed almost imperceptibly and played screensavers of what looked like photos of community events. She picked the screen furthest from the library desk, as far away from prying eyes as possible but when she nudged the mouse the screensaver was replaced with a screen prompting her to log in.

Dani frowned and looked toward the desk. She didn’t have a card, but she didn’t really want to sign up for one either. Didn’t you need ID for that kind of thing?

An older man sat down at a vacant computer close to hers, and Dani slid out of her seat and casually strolled to the bookshelf behind him. She pretended to be scanning the titles while he slowly used pointed index fingers to tap out his login details, and Dani carefully repeated the details in her mind as she grabbed a random book and headed back to her seat. Her screen had jumped back to the screensaver, and she doubted that she could log in while the man was already suing his account, so she surreptitiously turned to the back of her book and used a glowing fingertip to etch the man’s username and password into the bottom corner of the final page. She flipped back to the front cover again and raised an eyebrow at the yellow smiley face and the large self-help title in raised gold block letters.

Oh, well. Whatever.

Dani thumbed through her book, skimming through some of the tips in the organisational section while surreptitiously stealing glances at the man on the nearby computer. Her fingers almost itched with anticipation but she held herself steady.

It didn’t take him long to leave, and Dani could only hope that he hadn’t used up all of the allotted time on his account for the day. She flipped back to the details and typed them in, relief pulling a sigh from deep within her as the computer opened up to its main desktop page. The little timer in the top corner indicated that the account still had twenty minutes, so she pushed the book aside and opened the web browser straight away.

It only took a few seconds to log into Facebook, and Dani felt a twinge of guilt at the sheer amount of notifications. She was tempted to check them now, but the steady timer in the corner reminded her to focus and she clicked into the messenger webpage instead.

There were only two conversations — one from Danny, and the other from Valerie. Val’s were bolded and unread, but Danny’s… 

Dani chewed her lip and brushed overlong bangs out of her face, trying to fight through the sudden heart-wrenching betrayal of abandonment.

Danny’s last message to her had been over a year ago, the day she left for the Ghost Zone.

She quickly opened the conversation, double checking that yes, he hadn’t messaged her since she’d left. It didn’t make sense. This was their only form of communication when she wasn’t in town! Did he really think so little of her, that he wouldn’t message her so that she’d have something to come back to? Was she really just a clone to him after all?

That last thought stopped her anger in its tracks. Danny would never think that.

She took a deep, grounding breath, and opened the unread messages from Valerie.

There wasn’t much there, but what Danielle did see turned her blood to ice.

How could I have known when neither of you ever told me?!

I’m sorry

Please, Danielle, I’m sorry!

I didn’t mean it

You have to know I didn’t mean it

I never would have done it if I’d just KNOWN!

I’m sorry

Dani swallowed, hard. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard but for a long moment she just stared at the screen.

She clicked back into her conversation with Danny. The last time he’d messaged her was only a few days before that frantic barrage from Valerie.

Just make sure you stay away from Skulker!

Frostbite will help you if you need it

Or Pandora

At the time, she was amused by his overprotectiveness. Yeah I know. See you later!

He’d responded cheerfully, but then had never messaged her again.

Okay

Stay safe!

I hope you have a blast

She read it again, and panic crept into her core. “No,” she breathed, and clicked back to Facebook’s main page, searching up Danny’s account.

The latest posts were birthday wishes from two months ago.

Dani scrolled down, numb horror cocooning her thoughts. The posts made by his friends and family all blurred together into a collage of soft wishes of peace and somber murmurs of sadness. Below his birthday wishes were a collection of posts from four months ago, and Dani’s hands trembled as she read every single one.

Sixteen months.

The ambient sounds of the library faded into static as she realised that Danny Fenton had been dead and buried for sixteen months.

She swallowed past the sudden tightness in her throat, and it was like fighting past hands that were clenched around her neck. Dani’s eyes burned and she dragged in a shallow breath, sharp with the strain of fighting back tears.

They slipped down her cheeks anyway, and she sniffed and took another strained breath, clicking into her messages once more.

She didn’t know what to say, but Dani knew she had to say something. It wasn’t right, to just leave him hanging like that.

Her hands clenched in her lap, and Dani rubbed the water off her face only to have more tears fall straight away. A sob clawed its way out of her throat and she pressed her fist over her mouth, muffling it as much as she could.

People were looking at her now, and she ducked her head and tried to hold everything in.

This wasn’t fair. How could she have let this happen? How could she have left him?

How could he have left her?

She clenched her teeth together. As tempting as it was to post on his page, she didn’t want to be public about it. What right did she have anyway, to freshly grieve him when he’d already been gone for so long? What right did she have to message his friends, who she barely knew, or his family, who she had never even met?! How could she drag them into her existence when it’d just dredge up the rawness all over again?!

Dani realised that she’d tensed her body so much that she was trembling with the effort and had forgotten to breathe. She took a shaky breath, and her tight muscles snapped into a loud, hiccupping cry.

Gritting her teeth again, tears streaming down her cheeks and dripping into her mouth and off her chin, Dani typed three words into the private message chat box.

I’m so sorry.

She closed the browser, and the screen went black and flicked back to the login screen as the timer hit zero.

Grief crashed into her with the force of a tsunami and Dani pressed her palms over her eyes and wept. Huge, gasping sobs tore from her chest, making her gut ache as her pulse roared in her ears.

“Miss? Are you okay?”

It was probably the stupidest question she’d ever heard, and Dani shook her head mutely, keeping her hands over her eyes as the tears continued to flood through her fingers and snot began to drip from her nose.

Someone nudged her shoulder. “Here,” the same voice offered, and Dani peeked through her fingers to see a tissue box. She squinted up at the librarian, and the tears kept flowing like a tap that had been left running.

Dani pressed her lips together and nodded once, grabbing a handful of tissues and immediately burying her face in them as she was hit by a fresh wave of grief. She knew that eventually she’d have to move, she’d have to stop crying and take the next step, but for now all that mattered was the way her head throbbed with every sob and how her eyes burned hotter and hotter the more she cried. She couldn’t breathe deeper than short, shallow gasps, and every time she tried to think, all she could picture was Danny’s face and her world came crashing down again.

It took her a long time to stop crying, but when she did she was left staring at the pile of soaking tissues next to the keyboard as the bright halogen lights made her eyes sting.

She had no clue what to do now.

He was dead, and she didn’t even get to say goodbye.

[datawyrms]

Misplaced Courage

In his quest to expose Phantom, Wes enlists the help of the mayor. Everyone finds out Wes was right in the worst way possible. Prompts by @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy and @crackedfoutainpen Happy(?) Phic Phight everyone! On Ao3

It was ridiculous how no one could tell Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom were one and the same. He barely tried to hide it, content to be shielded by the fact Phantom was a ghost. After all, who would possibly think some dead kid was also an alive kid?

Honestly, Wes was pretty sure ‘Fenton’ was just a handy disguise for the ghost. It explained all of his little ‘accidents’ with the school glassware, how the black haired boy just happened to go missing whenever a big ghost fight went down. Oh and who could forget Tucker Foley and Sam Manson, who often helped Phantom? They just so happened to be Fenton’s BFFs? It was so obvious!

There were holes in the theory. Yes, both had been seen together at the same time, but both had been acting strangely. It was rare for that to happen. Yet everyone just liked to dismiss it because ‘Fenton’s a weak loser’ or ‘You think Phantom lives with ghost hunters’ and he was sick of all the mockery and wilful blindness to the facts right in front of him.

Which is why he had called Mayor Masters to let him know that he had information on Danny Phantom. If anyone was going to listen, it had to be him. The mayor made his disdain for the ghost boy clear countless times. If even he wouldn’t even try to see the truth, no one would.

The fact the mayor had scheduled a meeting with him the very next day put a flicker of hope back in his heart. Finally someone would take him seriously, someone could see the threat lurking nearby every single day.

Wes made sure his meticulous notes and (stealthily taken) photographs sat securely in the prepared folder and felt a brief bolt of pride whenever he caught a glimpse of it during the too long school day. Soon everyone would know. Soon he wouldn’t be some joke.

“Mr. Weston, was it? Please, take a seat.” Vlad Masters said, gesturing to the seat across from the grand mahogany desk. His smile was friendly, but felt sharp instead of comforting. Of course it was only there to be polite, but Wes couldn’t shake the chill snaking down his spine. “I heard you found out something about our local ghost pest?”

Most of the decorations here felt a little too big, too expensive for a mayor’s office. Though not many mayors were also billionaires. The explanation should have calmed his heart, dislodge the worry. This was stupid, he was going to finally expose Fenton for what he was, and he was getting cold feet because a rich and powerful man was just across the desk. He had to try. Mr. Masters wouldn’t just laugh at the suggestion. He would listen, he had to. He took a breath to steady his nerves and gave a lopsided smile back. “Yes sir. I found out how Danny Phantom manages to hide all the time, so that you never catch him.”

Vlad leaned forward ever so slightly in his chair, eyebrows arching in a clear display of interest. “Did you now? When I’ve had million dollar bounties on that ghost, and no one could get results?”

“Yes! Everyone was overlooking it, maybe the people you hired couldn’t do it because he doesn’t hide out around adults. He hides around other teenagers, like me.” Better to not make it sound like everyone the mayor hired was totally incompetent. Even if they were. 

“Fascinating. Can you elaborate?”

Okay, he looked interested, he was listening. He shouldn’t just brush off the truth like everyone else did. “The ghost boy can pretend to be human. Or is one, I guess since no one else seems to notice. I know who he is.”

“Now that is quite a serious accusation, Mr. Weston. You think a ghost is just hiding among regular people, dodging every ghost repelling measure that’s been taken?”

The doubt. He was losing him. Wes fumbled for the folder, only barely managing to place it on the desk without shaking. “I know it sounds weird, but I have proof! Not like a picture or anything, but if you connect all the dots it’s obvious!”

“Obvious? My boy, are you telling me that you think a human could act with the powers of a ghost?” Vlad leafed through the folder with one hand, but didn’t seem to be giving it his full attention. No. Those pale blue eyes were more fixated on him, for some reason.

“I know he is sir. Danny Fenton IS Danny Phantom. The ghost illness proved people could get powers! I don’t think he’s sick though- I think he’s always like that. Somehow.”

“So you’re suggesting an entire family of ghost hunters that is unaware of a ghost living in their home?”

Why did everyone ask that? “Uh, with no disrespect Mr. Masters, I kind of doubt they’d ever consider it possible- especially if the ghost was their kid.”

“True, true, Jack is almost impressive in his boundless ignorance.” The folder closed with a sudden snap, dropped with no ceremony. “Now my boy, who else have you told about this theory of yours? I wouldn’t want to waste time repeating it to those you’ve already informed.”

He was going to do something? Look into it just like that? Really? The joy he should feel was uncomfortably lodged in his throat, the voice in the back of his mind screaming it was too easy, too sudden. The mayor didn’t even want time to read over everything, he was accepting it just like that? “Well no one at school believes me, so I guess you’re the only one that even thinks this should be taken seriously?”

“So it’s fairly common knowledge that you believe that you know Phantom’s true identity then, even if they fail to understand it, I see.” He steepled his fingers and stared at the wall, pondering. When he unfroze from that position he tapped a key on his phone. “Cancel the rest of my schedule for today, something much more important has come up. Thank you.”

“Really? You’re going to find out what he’s up to right now?” Maybe he could help? Rub it in Fenton’s face a little once everyone knew he wasn’t who he pretended he was.

“Why of course. I couldn’t risk such news not being acted on immediately,” he said as he stood, keeping a close eye on the boy. “Did you have any other folders like this? Evidence and the like? My experts should be fully informed, you understand.”

“O-Of course! I can get you anything that would help.”

“Wonderful. We can take my limo to your abode and sort out what you’ve gathered,” his tone left no room for argument, sweeping out of the room with a presence that practically made Wes want to cower in its wake.

Should success feel like this? The looks, the praise just felt off. A little too perfect and calculated. No, no that was just his paranoia acting up again. He could follow with confidence and pride. Maybe it was just a bit of guilt towards Fenton. Not that he deserved any pity, lurking around and just controlling people, using his powers to screw with him because it was ‘funny’. The creep of a ghost deserved to get hunted down and dealt with. The plush limo seats didn’t ease the tingle, but he just dug his fingernails into his palms and forced himself to ignore it. This is what he wanted.

—

“I’m just saying we might actually win if you don’t use your controller” Tucker pleaded as he elbowed Danny as they walked onto the school yard. “You can react so much faster in person!”

Sam smirked at his antics. “In your dreams, Tuck. Danny knows I have him beat even when he cheats.”

“Hey! It’s not cheating, it’s uh. Creative control schemes.”

“Suuuure it is. You’d think you’d be a better shot by now.”

“I’m not that bad. It just hurts when you sneak up on me!” Danny rubbed the back of his neck, giving Tucker a weak grin. “Seriously though, I get hit enough without needing to feel it when we’re playing Doomed. Sorry.”

“Aw mannnn. She’s gonna thrash us again if we don’t try something new!”

“Try practicing,” was the goth’s suggestion, earning an eye roll from her friend.

Danny opened his mouth to make a retort but froze as the frosty breath of his ghost sense escaped instead of words. Great. “First thing in the morning? I’m going to get marked late again!” He scowled as he shrugged off his backpack and handed it off to Tucker.

“Hey, at least your stuff will be in class on time.”

“Maybe it can take notes for me too. If it’s the Box Ghost I’m gonna kick him into next week for this.”

“You’re sure you don’t want backup?” Sam frowned at the bag, already reaching for her own.

“All of us being late because we’re chasing a ghost would look really bad, so yeah. I’ll be fine. Probably.”

“You got this dude, be confident!” 

Danny couldn’t help but smile a little at the reassurance and nodded before dashing off to find a more secluded corner to transform. All he needed to do was be invisible for a moment, find who was giving him a headache and probably get detention again. Great start to the day.

The difficult bit was the lack of noise. Usually someone would yell when they saw a ghost, or the sound of people running away would tip him off. Yet the halls remained the normal low buzz of activity as he floated above the disorganized mess of teenagers. Maybe one of the still empty classrooms? Or the storage rooms.

Nothing.

Was his ghost sense faulty? The first bell was ringing in his ears, a painful temptation to forget it and go back to class before the second bell sealed his fate.

Maybe it distracted him too well, considering how he got a heavy blow to the back of his head. He only barely managed to throw up a barrier to break his sudden slam into the concrete floor. It still hurt, it always hurt when he hit this hard enough that his bones vibrated under his skin, but he was able to turn and face his assailant quickly. “Seriously? You couldn’t wait until after school, Plasmius?”

“Unfortunately not all of us can pretend problems will solve themselves, Daniel.” He didn't give the boy a chance to retort, seven quick blasts shot and slamming heavily into boxes, chairs and startled hybrid.

“Like that makes any sense. Get lost!” Danny blocked the next volley and launched forward with a glowing green fist, narrowly missing the vampiric ghost’s trailing cape. With a grunt he twisted in midair to fire a blast after such a close miss, but the crackling slam of ectoplasm against shield proved him one step behind again.

Well, if he couldn’t quite keep up he could always distract Vlad. “What, you aren’t going to tell me your evil scheme? Make a gross pass at my mom?”

Vlad bared his teeth at the insult, but only tried to attack again instead of giving the expected answer, or insult back. An attack that was a feint, an opening that just let a duplicate Danny hadn’t been aware of send a painful shock through his body.

At least it was easy enough to grasp his ice powers even as he jerked from the agony, doppelganger banished with a swift retaliation blast. Danny swung blindly instead of aiming, mostly trying to avoid being caught in another trick.

His blind strike hit home, but met no resistance. The first one was a copy too? It was so unfair that he had that power. Wait. If that was a fake, where was the real Vlad? Green eyes darted all over the room, but no more attacks came. Okay, time to find a creep. No big deal.

The ghost shield he slammed into face first at full speed was a bit of a deal. Mostly because he was slumped on the floor clutching his head, cursing Plasmius to every terrible fate he could think of. Of course this was a trap, of course there was some stupid gadget trying to trap him here! “I can walk through these too, Vlad,” the boy muttered to himself as he found his footing and the door, dropping his ghost form as he ran.

There was screaming now. Fear, panic and worry that only made him want to run faster, heart pounding as he dodged between fleeing students. No one would notice him, or care he was going the wrong way. He just knew he had to go now, as quickly as possible. This kind of terror was wrong, he could feel it. A weight on his shoulders that wasn’t right, wasn’t how people normally felt. Maybe it added a little extra get up and go to his feet, but he was going to try and ignore that his ghost powers might get a boost from this awful tension in the air.

Danny didn’t intend to speak or yell out until he was back in his ghost fighting persona, but the blood splatter on the floor threw all his senses out of the window. Was he after Tucker and Sam? Trying to hurt or kill his friends now? His eyes flared green as he spotted the ghost hovering over the bloody display, nose wrinkling as the wet stench of iron crawled down his throat.

Vlad was right there, floating casually. He didn’t have Sam, or Tucker. He did have someone, limp and motionless, too stained with blood dripping down to the tile below to identify them right away. The man shouldn’t look so impassive while clutching a bloodied teenager with one hand, other black glove stained crimson so there was no mistake who had caused the damage.

They were the only three things that existed right now. Him, the devil himself, and the body. The scream ripped out of his throat before he could even consider anything else, already lowering into a battle stance. “Put him down!”

“Hm? Oh my boy, of course. I already have,”

Time froze as the snide words slid into his ears. Already had? Already? A joke. It had to be a joke. He wasn’t too late, that wasn’t a corpse.

Vlad either didn’t notice or didn’t care how the boy was only staring in wide eyed shock. “If you don’t want to keep cleaning up messes, one should be more careful. Especially about what they say.”

He let go of the thing hanging from his hand and Danny moved out of some desperate need to stop whoever it was from taking more pain, suffering even more for no reason. As they weren’t dead, they couldn’t be dead, he refused to believe Vlad actually had the guts to go through with murder when his dad was still alive and well.

Their blood was still warm, awful as the red sunk into his white t-shirt. It was still flowing. Not dead. Not yet. What could he do? He didn’t want to look this closely, didn’t want to feel how weak and limp this person was but he had to. This was his fault.

It wasn’t just shallow lacerations on the chest and arms.

Wes’ half lidded eyes barely twitched as he registered the new face in front of him, an awful bubbling noise that might have been an acknowledgement. His face held the true wound that caused such a mess, missing his lower jaw entirely. No tongue lolling out without anywhere to go, the boy truly silenced in a gruesome display.

“Wes?” Danny asked, half wondering if he would wake up from this. Another twitch before his eyes rolled back, no longer able to keep his feeble grip on consciousness. 

So much blood. He had to stop it. With what? His shirt? That wouldn’t be enough! It had to stop, get held back. Ice. He could do that. He had to, he couldn’t let someone die. Frost hissed at the remaining edge of his face before hardening suddenly, a misshapen chunk of ice binding skin back together, the cuts getting a similar icy scab as he begged for it to be enough, that he could hold on. See, this was better right? He could kid himself that the small white fragments of exposed bone was just a trick of the icy covering.

“What are you-”

Danny didn’t care what that monster was saying, he didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to hear anything. There weren't any words for this.

So he screamed.

He wailed.

Wailed with a power his human body couldn’t be expected to take, shrieked even as his throat burned and mouth bled.

Only after that did he hear the rest of the world again. Worried mutters, screams and footfalls. His legs gave out and he fell, still making sure Wes didn’t hit the ground first, clutching him tightly even as he wanted to pass out.

He heard ambulance sirens coming. Good. Okay. Vlad was gone. The doctors could help. Darkness grabbed at the corners of his vision and he didn’t have the strength to keep pushing it back.

“Wes was right? About all of it?” A hissed mutter was the last thing he could hold on to as he succumbed. If only he could try to warn them not to say too much.

[phanboyo]

Under the Skin, Behind the Eyes

*swoops in at the last minute with the first chapter of a new fic* Sorry it took so long, this month has been very hectic, but here's a fic based on @five-rivers 's prompt, "For centuries, the cult has anticipated the glorious rise of Lord Phantom. That time is at hand. All they need to bring him fully into the mortal world is the perfect sacrifice: Danny Fenton." featuring a bit of @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy 's prompt, "Jazz is beginning to think she might have psychic powers."

Content warning: contains kidnapping, violence, murder, thoughts of suicide and self harm, and disassociation

AO3

FFN

In the darkness of his room, Danny slowly opened his eyes. The amber glow of the streetlights outside seeped through the cracks in his curtains and made odd shadows out of the clothes and books and games littering his floor. Danny's room, no matter what state it was in, always served as a safe, comfortable space for him. It was a place he could escape from his nagging sister, or his crazy parents, a place away from the rest of the world, where he could just be alone, with his own thoughts, if he chose, or with friends if he preferred. He didn't realize how comfortable that privacy was until tonight.

As his eyes roamed the room, he saw nothing out of place, and he took a deep breath to try to calm himself. He couldn't remember the nightmare, but he felt the aftereffects, unsettled by something entirely unknown. He looked up at the glowing stars stuck to his ceiling to ground himself.

Danny jumped at a noise from the hall outside his door and immediately berated himself. He was fourteen, not a kid anymore. He could handle a nightmare. Deciding that it was obviously just Jazz or one of his parents getting a glass of water, Danny stubbornly laid his head back down and pulled up the covers, his back to the door. He clenched his eyes shut and tried to ignore the fact that his unsettled feeling hadn't gone away.

And so, Danny met his alarm clock's shrill greeting with annoyance and exhaustion. Whatever nightmare that had gripped him so tightly through the night as to bar him from true sleep was chased away by the light of the morning. With the light, there were no unfamiliar shadows or imagined unknown depths. His room was his again and he angrily got dressed for school.

The living room was filled with the scent of frankincense, which was never a good sign for his folks. Danny decided to skip breakfast and leave before they could catch him, in hopes that whatever had them worried might ease off by the time he got home. He yanked his backpack out from under a box of white sheets sitting on the couch and headed for the door.

"Oh, Danny!" called Jazz as she entered the room. "There you are!" she walked over to him and smiled, relief easing her shoulders as she met his eyes, which Danny promptly rolled.

"Do you need something?" he asked anyway.

She bit her lip and glanced to the box of linens on the couch. "Um, no, not..." She examined him again, looking somewhat distracted, but Danny wasn't really in the mood to ask. "No." she decided.

Danny nodded slowly, lamenting his family's weirdness. "Well," he said slowly, "I'm gonna go to school," he pointed to the door with his thumb.

"Oh, let me drive you!" She walked briskly to the bathroom to grab something from the counter, and with the door ajar Danny noticed that the mirror was covered by a white sheet.

Jazz plucked her keys from the hook on the wall, slung her bag over her shoulder and turned back to the door just in time to see it shut. "Danny!" she called after him.

_____

The school day progressed normally, with Danny mostly paying attention in class between doodles. Lunch was as unimpressive as ever, some sort of chunky brownish-gray sludge paired with dry baby carrots and a cream-colored cookie as hard as a hockey puck. Danny deemed the carrots safe enough.

"-even listening to me?" Danny looked up at Sam who was looking at him expectantly.

"Uh, yeah," Danny started, trying to play back in his mind the conversation he hadn't actually been listening to. "Occult holiday? Very cool."

Sam seemed to accept this answer well enough. "Yeah, well you only get an overlap of celestial phenomena like this once every few centuries."

Danny perked up at this "Oh are you talking about the Luceli comet tonight?" Danny had been in such a funk this morning he'd nearly forgotten.

Sam rolled her eyes. "Yes. I knew you weren't paying attention."

"Get the future astronaut and the astrology nut on the same page and I'm out," Tucker said.

"I'm not an astrology nut Tucker, that's way too mainstream for me," Sam insisted.

"Yeah okay, don't act like you don't have your rising and moon and everything all mapped out," he said. It was about then that Danny checked back out of the conversation, having no idea what they were talking about.

Danny walked home after school, his shoulders sore from his backpack straps digging in, and his head empty. He was so tired. He couldn't wait to go up to his room, shut the door and collapse into bed. He hoped the incense didn't pervade the house enough to reach his room.

Danny was suddenly seized by a large arm locking around his thin body, easily picking him up to leave his feet kicking in the air. A cold piece of cloth was pressed forcefully to his face and Danny yelled through it, panicking. His head was yanked back into the chest of his attacker and the pressure of the hand against his face made his nose hurt.

Whatever the cloth was soaked in smelled astringent and oddly sweet, and before Danny could think to hold his breath his vision began to blur and his exhaustion overcame him.

_____

"-small, are you sure he'll have enough blood in 'im?"

Danny's whole body felt sore and heavy. His neck hurt and he could barely register the hard floor under his shoulder.

"Dolohov you idiot, did you even read the ritual? The amount of blood doesn't matter, it's only purpose is as a conduit for the life force."

Danny's mind felt cloudy. Were these people talking to his parents about their weird ghost stuff? It didn't sound like his parents. It didn't smell like frankincense or sage or lavender. It smelled like paint and burning pine.

"Well so-rry Masters, we can't all be college dropouts." The voice came through more clearly now.

"That wasn't my fault and you know it! Besides, I'll have my revenge on that dolt soon enough."

Danny fought through the fog and blinked his eyes open to a dim light. He moved to rub his eyes but found something tugging on his wrists.

"Ah, I think the little lamb is waking now."

Danny drew in a sharp breath and nearly coughed. He was in a large room, lit by many candles. He laid on his side with his ankles and wrists tied with a rough chord that scratched at his skin. Underneath him were scribbled lines, too dark to make out in the dim lighting. He saw a few men dressed in dark flowing clothing and white masks.

"Good, we can start the preparation." He felt a cold hand yank him up by the arm, and it was only then that he realized that he had been stripped of all his clothes, covered only by a white linen tied around his waist.

He couldn't find the strength in his legs to stand, but the man gripping his arm seemed to have no trouble holding him up. He peered at Danny's face, and Danny could make out gleaming dark eyes through the eye holes in the mask. "We'll need you quite sober for this, little lamb. Don't worry though, we won't draw it out too long."

Danny's heart hammered in his chest. Was this some sort of weird prank? It was definitely up his parents' alley. But that feeling of dread from the night before had returned in full force, pooling in the pit of his stomach, and he knew that this time it was real. "Wha-what are you gonna do t'me?" Danny's voice sounded terribly weak and raspy to his ears.

The man hummed. "You have the honor of being the world-opening sacrifice to the Tromeros Phantaezo, the great and powerful Lord of Death."

Danny's blood ran cold and he realized as his cheeks begun to cool that at some point he had started to cry.

"Brethren let us begin," called a deep voice from behind him. "We must have him prepared before Venus reaches its zenith."

With that another masked man came, reverently carrying an ornate silver bowl, addorned with engravings that gleamed like stars in the flickering candlelight. "To purify the vessel."

A fistfull of Danny's hair yanked his head back as the bowl was brought to his firmly closed mouth. It was warm against his lips and the smell wafting from it was of honey and sweet spices. "Drink" he was commanded.

When he refused to obey, his jaw was yanked open quite painfully, and he let out a cry as the sweet liquid filled his mouth, which was then promptly held shut by a sweaty hand. He stared angrily at the men in front of him through tears, and in his defiance another pinched Danny's nose, forcing him to swallow so he could breathe.

"C'mon little lamb, that wasn't so bad now was it?"

He distantly registered chanting behind him in some foreign tongue, and Danny tried to yank out of the cultist's grasp to no avail. "Let me go, you freaks!" Danny's throat felt thick and his voice sounded abnormally high and muddied.

The cultist in front of him grabbed his chin and looked into his eyes. "You should be honored, little lamb. The pain will be over soon enough. Shame you won't get to see the Lord of Death in all his glory as he makes this world his."

A wooden stick with a blackened end was dragged across Danny's forehead, uncomfortably warm. "Yew ash," a voice said, barely audible above the now constant chanting.

Danny was brought to kneel in the painted symbols on the ground, a cultist at his back with a fistful of dark hair. Another approached, a knife in his hand gleaming in the firelight.

"A life touched by Sight," he said as the chanting reached a crescendo, "given to open the door!"

The knife was plunged into Danny's chest, cold and hot as he was gripped with shock. He dimly registered the hot blood leaking down his stomach, seeping into his loincloth and dripping onto the floor. His vision swam and his hearing dimmed. He no longer felt a tension at his scalp and he collapsed to the stone floor in a heap.

His eyes fluttered, desperately trying to stay open, but they felt so heavy. He could barely make out a bright light in the shape of a man, a cold, otherworldly green instead of the warm yellow of the candles. A piercing screech hit his ears and it all went dark.

_____

Danny hadn't been expecting to wake. He hadn't thought too deeply about the existence of an afterlife before, but he was quite shocked to find consciousness at all. He felt a dull ache in his chest. He reached up to touch it, surprised to find his hands unbound. He looked quickly around the dark room, the sight that greeted him making his heart drop into his stomach.

Despite the lack of an obvious light source, he could see quite clearly the remnants of the ritual, as well as the still forms of black-clad, mask-wearing cultists laid all throughout the room. Their masks were no longer white.

Danny felt his stomach roiling at the stench of blood. He tried to retch, but all he had eaten today was a couple of dry baby carrots and spiced honey water. He found himself on all fours, staring at the concrete and trying to breathe deeply enough to calm his nerves. The smell was making it worse.

His eyes wandered over to his hands, which were dark up to the elbows, covered in blood. What happened?! The question repeated over and over in his mind, panicked, confused, and overwhelming.

He stood on shaking legs and looked around the room, trying hard not to look at the corpses littering the floor, still warm. I have to get out of here.

Danny spotted the door, stained with a large smear of blood at eye level, smeared down to meet a cultist leaning up against it as if crushed against it while trying to escape. A sob choked its way out of Danny's mouth as he lurched towards the door on shaking legs like those of a newborn doe.

Danny fumbled for the knob and tried to yank it open, sobs growing louder as he failed to pull against the dead weight at the bottom or the lock holding it closed. He yanked and pushed the handle desperately in rapid succession, irrationality taking hold, and suddenly fell through the door.

He landed hard on the other side and gasped. He turned and stared up at the door. It was still closed.

"... what..?" his voice was whispered, but deafening in the silence around him. He took deep breaths of blood-free air, trying to clear the snot and tears from his throat.

'Get up.'

The thought was so loud that Danny looked around, thinking someone else had said it. Finding himself alone, he took another deep breath and got up. The concrete was cold against his feet, but not uncomfortable.

He padded up the stairs at the end of the hall and pushed open the door, leading into a long hallway, dim moonlight streaking in from large spaces out windows. Could he just leave? Should he try to find his stuff, or find a phone and call the police?

'How do you think the police will react to find you covered in the blood of a dozen dead men with not a scratch on you?'

Danny jumped at the voice. "W-who's there?" he looked up and down the hallway and saw no one. It was silent, save for the beating of his own heart, much slower than he would have expected.

Danny's hand came up to his chest where he had been stabbed. He felt smooth skin underneath dried blood. Startled, he looked down at his body. He was still mostly naked, and covered in blood, but the voice was right, there wasn't a scratch on him.

He was suddenly very aware of the drying blood crumbling and flaking on his skin as he moved and felt an overwhelming urge to scrub it off. He walked silently down the hall, opening doors until he found a bathroom. Before he could think about the sense of his actions the bloodstained linen was in the wastebasket and Danny was standing under a stream of hot water, watching it turn rust red as it snaked its way towards the drain. He scrubbed his skin until it stung.

Danny stood in the shower perhaps longer than he should. He had no idea where he was or what time it was. If it weren't for the unfamiliar shower he was standing in and the shampoo that wasn't his, he would be thinking it had been some sort of crazy dream. But he could still feel a phantom of rough hands on his jaw, still smell the ghost of the sweet odor of chloroform, still feel the cold metal of a silver dagger push through his skin.

Danny pressed a hand to his chest, just over his heart. A second passed. Two. Three. Just as Danny started to panic, he felt a beat under his fingers. It was slow, but steady. He must have imagined it, then. There was no way he could have survived that. Was he crazy? Sane people didn't hear voices.

He did his best to shove that thought out of his mind, shutting off the water and grabbing an emerald green towel off the rack. After drying off, he rubbed at the fog on the mirror, looking at his expression. He looked normal, despite how different he felt.

Images of the ritual room flashed through his mind again in painful detail. His breath hitched and he held the eyes of his reflection, trying to ground himself and not really succeeding. He could hear the dripping off the shower faucet, steadier than his own breath.

"Did I kill those people?" He asked himself.

His reflection's eyes flashed a cold, otherworldly green. "No, I did," the echoey voice left his mouth without his input and Danny jumped back from the mirror, falling against the tub with a startled cry.

"Wha- oh, oh man I really am crazy." Danny's hands climbed into his hair, fingers pulling at the wet strands.

'I am not a hallucination.'

"Very reassuring," Danny responded hysterically, only vaguely aware that he was now talking to himself. "Sounds exactly like something a hallucination would say."

'I am Phantaezō.'

Danny froze. "Lord of Death?" His voice was small. Were his parents right about spirits being real all along? Did something happen during the ritual? Maybe it wasn't all in his head, but could he afford to entertain that possibility? If he was wrong it would only drive him further into madness.

'I'll prove it.'

Danny felt a chill run up his spine and suddenly he felt lighter. When did he stand up? He looked down to find that he was in fact not standing, but floating. Danny yelled. His eyes were glowing green in the mirror again.

"Stop it! Stop!" Danny yelled, clutching at his head and clenching his eyes shut. He felt his butt hit the floor again, cushioned by the plush yellow bath mat, and felt slight relief at the familiar return of weight to his body.

He thought of how he fell through the door to the hallway. Surely he couldn't just have imagined that. He stared at his hands, thinking about passing through the door. He felt a chill and his hands became translucent. He gasped and they flickered back to normal. He turned them over, staring.

"...What did you do to me?" he whispered.

'I saved you.'

How, Danny was about to ask, before his parents' constant distrust of spirits kicked in. "Why?"

The spirit was quiet for a long time, but Danny could feel its presence in his mind, cold but intense, burning like frostbite. Finally it spoke.

'They wanted me for their bidding, those foolish mortals thought they could control me, me.' The spirit paused. 'In their effort to hold me, they made a mistake trying to close the Door. If I hadn't latched onto a stable form I would have been torn.'

Danny was silent, trying to digest this. A god of death saved his life and possessed him in order to avoid being destroyed by cultists, whom it then killed using Danny's body.

"Why me?"

'You have touched death.'

Danny's breath caught in his throat as the Phantom pain of a dagger struck his chest. "Am I dead?"

The spirit paused. 'Not… anymore.'

Danny took a deep breath and pressed his hand to his heart, feeling for the slow beats to reassure him that the spirit was speaking truth. He was alive. He was possessed. What should he do? "Exorcism?" He ventured.

The spirit scoffed. 'As if any priest could remove me.'

Danny clapped a hand over his mouth. He hadn't meant to say that aloud. He was posessed by some great god of death. Could a priest handle that? Twelve occultists who seemed to know what they were doing certainly couldn't. Maybe his parents could help, they knew about this kind of thing. His mind went back to the corpses lining the room. No. No, he wouldn't get them killed. He bit his lip. They were probably worried sick about him. He had no idea how long he'd been away. The change from day to night showed that it had been at least several hours since school ended, but for all he knew it could be days.

'Human?' the voice interrupted his thoughts.

"My name is Danny," he replied absently.

'Danny,' it said pointedly. 'If you build me a new Door I can leave.'

There was a way out? Danny stood. "Okay, how do I build this door then?" he asked eagerly. His thoughts then returned to the ritual, the cultist's voice echoing in his ears. "A life touched by sight given to open the door!" He slumped again, filling with an odd combination of rage and despair. "I won't kill anyone."

'I can take care of that,' it said.

Danny's eyes snapped up to the mirror. They were blue. He pointed at his reflection nevertheless. "No," he said forcefully, ignoring the shake in his muscles. "You are not killing anyone."

The spirit huffed a long sigh.

"Promise!" Danny demanded.

'You want me to promise?' it asked in amusement.

"Yes!" Danny exclaimed. "Swear!"

Danny resisted a flinch as his eyes swirled green. He watched his shoulders relax and a smile eased its way onto his face. A low, echoing chuckle oozed from his mouth. "How could you possibly stop me, little lamb?"

Danny was starting to really hate that nickname. His heart pounded in his chest and he felt a coolness wash over him that had nothing to do with the ghost inside of him.

"I'll kill myself."

His reflection tilted it's head, eyeing him curiously.

"I'll kill myself, and then you won't have a-a stable form to latch onto."

A hand came up to brush his lips as if in thought. The smile on his face became challenging. "What makes you think I couldn't just bring you back again?"

Danny's stomach dropped. Was he forced to be the puppet of some murderous evil spirit against his own will? Trapped with this demon in some sort of hell on earth? Surely there had to be some way out. Maybe he could destroy himself beyond repair. Surely even this thing had its limits.

"I-I'll throw myself in a wood chipper," Danny tried. "Jump into an inferno. Bury myself in concrete. Drag myself to the bottom of the ocean." Danny's breath hitched. "Launch my ashes into space."

His reflection examined him for a long moment. "You feel very strongly about this," it noted, amusement mixing with curiosity.

Danny nodded, his breath coming in and out more quickly than he'd realized. "Yes."

It stared at him for another long moment before seeming to make up its mind. "Alright," it said. "I won't kill anyone while I'm here."

Danny nodded. "Promise."

His reflection rolled its eyes. "I promise not to intentionally kill anyone while I'm here. Cross my heart and hope to, well," it smiled. "You know."

Danny took a shaky breath and turned away from the mirror, running a hand through his hair. "Okay, so how do I build this door?"

'Well, without some sacrifices to part the veil, it'll take a while. I suggest getting comfortable, we're in it for the long haul, kid.'

_____

It took Danny a while to find some clothes. The layout of the mansion (it could only be described as a mansion) was confusing, and the continuous green and gold color scheme that adorned the winding hallways didn't help. Phantom seemed to pick up on the layout much more quickly however, and let Danny know when he was backtracking or going in circles.

The fifth bedroom that Danny found was the largest so far, and the only one with clothes in the closet. Nearly all of them were suits, collared shirts, and slacks, and silken pajamas, but he found some sweatpants, which he cinched tightly at the waist, and a Green Bay Packers hoodie.

"That explains the decor," Danny muttered. "How crazy can you get?"

'Cultists, remember?' the spirit chimed.

"Your cult," Danny reminded him, pulling the hoodie on.

'I don't claim them,' he replied hotly. 'They tried to control me.'

Danny rolled his eyes. "Betrayal cuts deep, huh?"

The spirit made an offended noise. 'I was never affiliated with those misguided idiots!'

Danny rolled up the hems of the sweatpants to keep himself from tripping on them and felt tiny in the oversized clothes. "Yeah, okay ghost boy," he muttered as he began looking for shoes that could potentially fit him, but quickly gave up. If he couldn't find his stuff he might have to brave the world in sweatpants and socks.

'Ghost boy?' it asked incredulously. 'I am the Regnandi Sarruum Phantaezō, Lord of Death, defeater of Pariah Dark, conqueror of the Infinite Realms-'

"Okay, okay, touchy," Danny said. "Reggie, Sam, Phantom, whatever."

Phantom didn't grumble, per say, but Danny could feel his irritation, buzzing like static on a TV. 'You were not this impertinent before.'

Danny snorted. "Threatening to throw you in a wood grinder isn't impertinent?" His grin faded and he sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I don't think I have any more energy to deal with ridiculous things like threats of violence today."

'Sleep, then. There is much work to be done if I am to return to the Infinite Realms.'

Danny shook his head. “I wanna get this over with as soon as possible, I don’t want you here any longer than necessary. Danny shut the closet door. What do we need to get started?”

'Well, a lot of things. Raven feathers, silver, dead sea salt, highly conductive metals for energy relay, beta flos sanguinus-those will be vital if you're going to continue to be adamant about the whole "not killing anyone" thing-oh, and we'll need some explosives-'

"Explosives?!"

'We'll be punching a hole between dimensions, kid. Don't worry, explosives are easy to come by in this plane.'

"That's not what I was-" Danny huffed. "Okay, whatever. Explosives, sure. What's the, the beta floss?"

'Beta flos sanguine, a type of flower with special properties. Witch hunters tend to have them, do you know of any?'

"Do I know of any witch hunters?" Danny asked incredulously.

'Yes, they go from town to town with diverse weapons of torture, hunting-'

"I know what a witch hunter is!" Danny said, rolling his eyes. "It's not the 1600s anymore, witch hunters aren't a thing!"

Phantom seemed to consider this. 'I'll admit, it has been a while since I was last summoned, and news of your realm has been rather scant of late. Alright then, who fights against the creatures of darkness nowadays?'

"The creatures-" Danny shut his mouth before he could make another sarcastic remark and thought for a moment. Sam would probably call herself a creature of darkness, but that's probably not what Phantom was referring to. "Uh I dunno, priests?" Horror movies like The Exorcist and The Conjuring came to mind.

Phantom made a scornful noise. 'Doubtful they'd have such things. They don't know the first thing about the occult, or actual mechanisms of summoning and banishment. They merely rely on their paltry faith.'

Danny hummed as his mind went back to Sam. She definitely educated herself on the occult. It was one of the reasons she first became friends with him. Danny's mother made him wear a protective talisman to school after he came home with bruises courtesy of Dash. Sam saw it and immediately began to inundate him with talk of the occult and supernatural, which, much to her delight, he easily followed. She eventually realized that, despite the knowledge gained from his unusual upbringing, he had very little actual interest in the occult. By then, however, she had already deemed him a good friend and they had been ever since.

"I have a goth friend who's into gardening. She might know where to find rare occult flowers."

Phantom hummed. 'Yes, we'll have to give that a try. Best to do it quickly, the process to convert them for our purposes will take a couple months at the least.'

Danny's heart dropped as the reality of his situation began to sink in. He was stuck with a murderous spirit inside his head for months at the least. A spirit that had shown that it could take control of his body to some degree. What if it's intentions were more malicious than it was letting on? His parents always told him off the cunning and guile of evil spirits. He had stopped believing them in middle school, but now he had to wonder about the truth of it. Would this door they were preparing really rid him of Phantom? Or would it bring on the end of the world? Could Danny live with that? Would he live at all after this?

"How do I know I can trust you?" Danny asked, before amending his statement. "How do I know that this is actually going to send you back and not cause the apocalypse?"

Phantom tsked. 'You really don't know anything about the Infinite Realms, do you? Or multidimensional planar configuration?'

Danny paused. Multi what? "Uh, no. Can't say that I do," he said quietly.

'Well,' Phantom started, 'The Infinite Realms is unique in that it has all of the right physical properties and dimensional positioning to easily access a multitude of smaller planes, hence the name of "Infinite Realms."'

"Okay…?"

'It is much more vast than any other realm in existence. This is due in part because of the fluidity of what you call "ectoplasm," which makes up most of the dimension. It allows for great spatial manipulations and lends itself well to the creation or linking of pocket dimensions. Its size is also due its age, one of the two oldest realms known.'

"What's the other one?" Danny asked curiously.

'... Yours. ' Phantom said. 'They formed, near as we can tell, at the same time. More solid and stable elements of this dimension allowed for the elasticity of elements in ours, and vice versa. They are nearly opposite. Two sides of one coin. Impossibly different, but inherently linked.'

Danny listened now with rapt attention.

'It is for this reason that you can trust that I do not seek to destroy your realm. Only a fool would seek power at the cost of such imbalance. Chaos and destruction in your world would bring the same in mine.'

"... Oh," Danny said simply.

'Yes,' Phantom said, his voice taking on a softly melancholic tone, 'It's such a shame you will not have the honor of seeing its chaotic beauty.' His wistful tone became far away and nostalgic. 'The silvery green mists of the Far Fields that cling to you as you float through them, like a cold caress. The ringing sound of ectoplasmic winds through the barren zones, like the bow of a skillful player across enchanted strings, the soft glow of pertarials as you push energy through them, as if beaming in delight at your care…'

An odd feeling settled in Danny's chest as he spoke, a hiraeth that felt cool but comforting, aching but soft, certainly new, but distantly familiar in a way that was almost primordial.

"... It sounds lovely."

'It is.' Phantom said. 'And I would like to get back, so if you wouldn't mind getting a move on to wherever you're going to start this-'

"Oh, y-yes, right," Danny said, exiting the large room.

_____

Danny finally found the front door. He had searched every room he could find (which was rather a lot) but didn't find his backpack or clothes. They must have dumped them somewhere else. Danny opened the front door and was greeted by a cold wind, which would have normally chilled Danny to the bone. He didn't get so much as goosebumps. Normally this fact would have concerned him, but Danny was looking down at his feet, shod only in socks that were slightly too big for him. He looked out the door again at the woods in front of him. This small mansion appeared to be secluded. "Great," Danny muttered. "Nothing better than being lost in some creepy woods at night."

'Hey, you've got me,' Phantom said in a tone that was probably meant to be reassuring.

Danny rolled his eyes. "Ah yes, lucky me."

'Indeed!' Phantom exclaimed. 'Onward!'

Danny adjusted the leather bag on his shoulder, another thing he'd found in the house, to carry water, a flashlight, a little bit of food, and some cash he'd found, just in case. With a breath, Danny took a step outside. He could barely feel the stone walkway beneath his thick socks.

"Onward," Danny echoed.

____

After about twenty minutes of walking, Danny found a dirt road, which led, about forty minutes later, to a paved road. Danny found that the unfamiliar terrain was quite easy to see and navigate through, despite the night clouds dimming the already faint moonlight.

"Alright, now we're getting somewhere." Danny knew the positions of the stars pretty well, but not quite well enough to know exactly where he was. He started walking down the road in a northeast direction. "Hopefully someone will drive by and be willing to pick up a shady teenager on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere,"

'I wouldn't worry, you don't look like any shadowy wilderness spirit I've ever seen, ' Phantom reassured.

Danny rolled his eyes. "Thanks, but I was thinking more along the lines of 'mental asylum escapee,' or perhaps 'murderous delinquent.'"

Phantom gave a confused hum. 'But you've been very clear about your aversion to murder, you didn't change your mind did you?' he asked, a with a little too much excitement.

"No!" Danny said emphatically. "No murder." He put his face in his hands. "And here I am talking to a murderous voice in my head. Who wouldn't want to pick me up?"

'I'm sure someone will come along,' Phantom said.

About an hour later, Danny was considering taking a break, when a pair of distant headlights came into view. Eagerly, Danny stuck his thumb out into the road. "C'mon, c'mon."

The semi truck slowed to a stop next to him and Danny resisted the urge to cheer. The window rolled down and a man leaned over to get a look at him. He looked Danny up and down, lingering on his wet, dirty socks, before coming up to look Danny in the eyes again.

"Hey kid, you lost? It ain't safe out here this time 'a night."

Danny nodded. "Yeah, I don't know where I am, could you give me a ride?"

"Hop in," he said, pushing the door open and pulling back into the driver's side. Danny climbed up into the truck and sat in the large seat, smiling at the warm air blowing on his damp socks as the driver continued back down the road.

"How old are you, kid? You a runaway?" he asked, glancing at Danny out of the side of his eye.

Danny shook his head. "I'm fourteen."

"Fourteen," he repeated. "And what brought you to the middle 'a nowhere Wisconsin?"

So I'm in Wisconsin, Danny thought. That's only a few states over. Maybe his journey back home wouldn't be so long after all. "Cultists," Danny replied.

"Reaally?" the man responded dubiously.

"Yep."

"Cultists."

"Mhmm. Tied me up to sacrifice to a god of death." Danny said without a beat.

"Well you look pretty good for a sacrifice victim."

Danny shrugged. "What can I say, I'm a tough kid."

'Having a powerful otherworldly spirit with supernatural healing abilities on your side doesn't hurt,' Phantom said.

"Yeah, I'll bet you took them all out with your bare hands when you escaped," he said.

Danny's smile faltered as he remembered waking up in a dark room surrounded by corpses and covered in blood.

"... Yeah," he said quietly.

The driver glanced at him a little longer this time. "Alright, well, do you have a name?"

He nodded. "Danny."

The truck driver nodded too. "I'm Rick. Nice to meet'cha, Danny. You know, I've got a cousin named Danny, crazy fella, this one time we were rafting up in Quebec…"

Danny relaxed, watching the dark trees slide past the window and listening to Rick tell stories. He was a good storyteller, and he had a lot of them. Danny was exhausted, and with the smooth rumble of the truck and the warm air blowing through the vents, he easily fell asleep.

____

Danny was shook awake, and without a thought his hand shot up to grab the wrist of whomever had touched him.

"Whoa, easy tiger," said Rick, putting up his other hand placatingly. Danny let go of Rick's arm.

"S-sorry."

"'S okay," Rick said. "We're at a rest stop. Figured you might wanna take a bathroom break. Plus ya haven't actually told me where you're headed. You might need ta catch another ride."

Danny nodded and looked out the window. The sun was up, brightly lighting the rest stop, it looked about mid afternoon. He must've slept all through the morning. "Yeah," he nodded again. "Yeah, okay."

"Alright," Rick said, stepping out of the truck and stretching with a groan.

Danny hopped down and looked at the convenience store next to the stop. "Thanks for the ride, Rick."

"Sure thing kid, glad I found ya when I did." Rick crossed his arms. "Promise me you'll stay outta trouble, now."

Danny bit his lip. With Phantom in his head he was neck deep in trouble and he had a feeling this was only the beginning. "I'll try," he said.

Rick pursed his lips. "Alright alright, just, be safe, okay?"

Danny nodded.

"No, I mean it. You're in danger, you do whatever it takes to get yourself out okay?"

Danny hesitated.

"Listen," Rick said, "I know that sounds drastic, but I've been through some shit, and I've seen others go through worse. You don't deserve that, and letting yourself get hurt for someone else ain't right. It won't fix anything, okay?"

Danny stared at his sock-clad feet. Rick didn't get it. His situation was different. Rick didn't know what Danny was. Danny didn't even know what he was anymore. Just a ticking time bomb. A freak. A danger.

"Danny," Rick said gently and Danny looked up at him. Danny wouldn't ever see Rick again. He could just say yes and leave. Rick didn't know him. Rick was just some truck driver. He'd never know Danny was lying.

Danny took a breath and nodded. "I promise I'll be safe," he said.

Rick's shoulders fell slightly and the determined look in his eyes became sad.

He knew.

Danny looked away again and Rick let out a sigh. "I wish you luck on your travels, kid. Bright side of the tunnel is coming, I promise."

Danny nodded and with one last "Thanks," left Rick, walking toward the convenience store.

The convenience store was, in fact, very convenient. Not only did it have the usual snacks and drinks, but another section had car parts and accessories and a few pieces of clothing in sizes from medium to XXXL, a few t-shirts, sweaters, and safety vests. To Danny's delight, they even had boots.

The smallest they had was one size larger than Danny usually got, but he also grabbed a couple pairs of thick socks and hoped that would make up the difference. After purchasing them and throwing his dirty socks in the trash, Danny bought a small pepperoni pizza and found that he was ravenous.

'What is this food?' Phantom asked, 'It is quite delicious.'

"You can taste my food?!" Danny asked abruptly before slapping a hand over his mouth. He looked around the dining area, and saw that the few people there hadn't looked up from what they were doing.

'At the moment, we share a body. Most unfortunate. However, that means that, yes, I feel the same sensations you do.' Phantom supplied.

"Oh," Danny whispered. "This is called pizza and I'm gonna get another one."

'Excellent idea.'

After the second pizza Danny felt less like he was being eaten from the inside out, and found that he only had a couple dollars left. He decided to see if he could find anyone heading to Amity Park.

After asking three truckers, a pair of newlyweds, two skiers on their way to Quebec, and a mom juggling three restless children, he found a small group of musicians who were traveling to St. Louis and would be passing through.

"Sure kid, we can give you a ride. As long as you don't mind sitting next to the drums."

"I don't mind at all," Danny smiled, letting out a sigh of relief. Maybe he would be getting home today.

_____

The trip was bumpy without a seat belt, but the musicians were a great crowd. They were loud and friendly, and their frequent laughter lifted Danny's spirits and eased the ever-growing dread and anxiety that had been pooling in his chest since the previous morning. For a moment, Danny thought that maybe he could do this. Maybe his situation wasn't impossible.

"Amity Park, a nice place to live!" called Eric from the passengers seat. Danny perked up and stood on his knees to look over the other chairs and out the front window. The sky had darkened once again, but was lit brightly by the familiar city lights in the distance.

Mads slapped him hard on the back. "Here you are, Danny, home sweet home!"

"Check out those buildings!" Xan said, pointing at the network of Axion Labs facilities behind barbed wire, the letters glowing a cool blue in contrast to the warm yellow security light around the buildings. "Man, it must be cool to live here," they said.

"Yeah," Danny shrugged. He had never really thought about it before. It has always just been where he lived.

They pulled up to a gas station and everyone got out, stretching and sighing.

"You gonna be able to find your way from here?" Mads asked as Danny got out.

"Yeah, he smiled. Thanks for the ride. Good luck with your gig!"

"Thanks dude!" Eric said, waving as Danny began to walk away.

"Look us up when you get home!" Xan called.

Danny laughed. "I will!" He waved at them one more time and began to walk. He was only eight blocks away.

As he walked his hometown streets again an odd mixture of feelings churned within him. Despite the lateness of the hour and the potential dangers hidden by the nooks of shadow the streetlights couldn't reach, Danny felt comfortable and secure, finally being somewhere familiar. He felt excited with the anticipation of finally getting home, relieved that he'd finally made it after such an arduous journey, but he also felt… fear. His skin crawled, knowing that he was not just Danny anymore. He was bringing home something else. Something dangerous and unnatural, harboring a horrific creature, a wild animal that could strike at any moment, bringing unknown pains. Any harm brought by this demon would be on Danny's hands. Could he hide it? Could he truly pretend that he wasn't dangerous, that he wasn't tainted, taken, compromised? He felt like a liar and a traitor, because despite the fact that he hadn't even reached his front step, he knew that he would. He knew what he would say.

Nothing.

As Danny approached FentonWorks, he began to feel chill. Phantom buzzed at the back of his mind, a cold, anxious energy. He walked up the first step and was immediately bombarded by a yell so loud Danny could have sworn that the neighbors heard it.

'STOP!' Phantom yelled, and with a jerk Danny turned around, taking several steps away from the house without his input. It was so weird to feel your body move without telling it to.

"What?!" Danny yelled, before glancing around to ensure that no one had heard.

'What is this place?' Phantom asked.

Danny huffed, throwing his arms out in exasperation. "My house," he whispered harshly. "What's your problem?"

'Oh,' Phantom said, 'I thought you were- well, nevermind. It is warded. Please remove the sigils, they are very…' he paused. 'Uncomfortable.'

Danny rolled his eyes. "Oh, you're uncomfortable? Sure, sure, let me just take care of that for you."

Danny marched up the steps and ripped the protective talisman off the front door, tossing it in the bushes.

He tried the handle and it resisted. Locked. He didn't have his key. He juggled the handle again and again, frustration and exhaustion rising up within him.

'You can simply phase through the door,' Phantom said, amused.

"Shut up you-" Danny hissed, but then stopped as the lock clicked and the door swung open, a sliver of light casting Danny's shadow into the street.

"Danny?" Jack asked, a smile splitting his face. Danny's breath hitched at the watery look coming from his dad. "Danny!" Jack yelled, scooping Danny into a big hug. Danny felt the tension that had been building over the past two days melt in his dad's warm embrace.

After a few seconds Jack set Danny back on the ground, and he was pulled into another tight hug.

"Sweetie, we were so worried about you!" his mom said. She released him and began fussing over him, checking for injuries. "Where were you? Are you okay?" she asked.

He reached up to stop her frantic hands, her arms feeling so warm against his cold fingers. "Mom, I'm fine." He smiled weakly at her, trying to ease her worried expression. She hugged him again, only for a few seconds this time before letting go.

"Oh sweetie, I'm so sorry, whatever we did to upset you, we didn't- Danny we love you so much-"

Danny shook his head emphatically. "I know mom, it wasn't you or dad," he said, getting pulled into another hug.

"You know you can tell us anything, sweetie," Maddie whispered into his hair. Danny gripped her shirt tighter and he felt his throat become dry.

"Yeah, I know," he said.

After a few more seconds Maddie released him once again, and looked at him for a moment before rubbing at her eyes. "I'll go let the police know you came home," she said, walking into the kitchen.

Danny looked up at caught Jazz's gaze, staring at him from the stairs. Her eyes were wide and her fingers gripped the railing with white knuckles.

"So, Packers, eh Danny?" Jack asked. Danny didn't break eye contact with Jazz. "You know, an old friend of me and Maddie was a huge Packers fan in college. I wonder how he's doing."

She knows, Danny thought.

______

'There's no way she knows,' Phantom said as Danny pulled on his pajamas.

"I'm telling you, she knows," Danny said quietly. "Did you see the way she was looking at me?"

'You're being paranoid,' Phantom said. 'You look just as pathetically mortal as you did before, trust me.'

Danny shook his head and ran his hands through his hair. "No, she's always had some sort of sixth sense about this stuff. Weird stuff. Bad stuff."

'Met a lot of otherworldly spirits of death5 have you?' Phantom asked sarcastically.

"No," Danny huffed and sat on the bed. "It's just…" he bit his lip. "I think she knew I was gonna get kidnapped. She was acting weird that morning and-" he sighed. "Now that I think of it, it's not the first time she's been weirdly right about things."

Phantom didn't say anything for a long moment. "Phantom?" Danny asked.

'Get some sleep, kid.' Phantom sighed. 'We've got a lot of work to do.'

And so Danny laid in bed and stared at the familiar glowing star stickers on his ceiling. He was back in his old room, but it did not bring the same comforts as it once did. Here he could no longer hide from the chaotic things of the outside world. He could no longer sit in silence with his own thoughts. He could not relax with friends, knowing what danger he now posed to them. He could not be alone even in his own head. The darkness of his room reflected the newfound darkness in his mind, and in the darkness, Danny slept.

[camels-pen]

Backfire

Summary: In his quest to expose Phantom, Wes enlists the help of the mayor.

(phic phight prompt by @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy)

Ao3 Link

~

Wes was a good student. A fantastic student, actually. Nearly all A’s and practically guaranteed to be on honor roll this year.

Fenton, on the other hand, was a straight C student.

Wes was a regular on the basketball team, a prominent member of the student journalism club, and had practically perfect attendance.

Fenton was behind on multiple assignments, had to constantly talk down his ghost obsessed and practically neglectful parents from harming peaceful ghosts, and was always skipping or leaving classes early, using the same tired excuse of unexpected bathroom issues each time.

From the outside perspective, the masses simply assumed he was cracking under the pressure of his responsibilities. Namely his peers, teachers, and family all thought he should cut back on one aspect of his life and immediately jumped to his hobby of photography.

Well, one part of that hobby anyway.

But finding the right shots to prove himself right was always a waiting game that required countless nights of diligent stakeouts.

Very diligent and very long stakeouts.

And one of said stakeouts is about to prove fruitful. After Plasmius got away from Fenton, the mayor himself emerged from one of the bushes next to Wes’, grumbling and dusting off his suit.

The man cursed to himself, using a variety of cookies and cheeses to colour his language, before starting to trudge off through the park, a noticeable limp to his step.

Wes furrowed his brows. “Why would he—?” He gasped as realization struck, a wide smile stretching across his face. “Oh- oh this is absolutely perfect. And I have a new project.”

---

Three weeks later, Wes found himself directed into Mayor Master’s office with the man in question relaxing in his large, movie villain-esque office chair and stroking a white cat that was laying on the desk. He managed to schedule an appointment with the man only for about fifteen minutes thanks to nagging his dad and agreeing to do double the chores for half his regular allowance for the month.

A hefty price to pay, but a necessary one if he was to finally expose Fenton for all to see.

Mr. Masters stared unimpressed. “And what, exactly, did you want to tell me?”

“It’s not what I can tell you, but rather what you can tell me.” Wes slapped down two side-by-side pictures, one of Danny Fenton and one of Danny Phantom. “What do you know about Fenton?”

Mr. Masters raised an eyebrow. “Besides being an annoying teenager?” Wes chose to ignore how that statement felt pointed at him too. “He likes fast food, ditching school, and hanging out with those two little friends of his.”

“Well, okay yeah, but I need something more solid. Specifically about how these two are connected.” Wes tapped the space between the pictures.

Mr. Masters hummed. “So, you’re jealous of my nephew? Want to find some blackmail on him so you can win the ghost boy’s heart?”

Wes spluttered. “I can’t be in love with him and be jealous of him!”

For a moment, Wes thought he saw a red glint in Mr. Masters’ eyes, but his calm and bored appearance stayed unchanged. “I’m not sure I’m following.”

“Look, there’s no need to play dumb.” Wes pulled out five more photos, this time of Danny in various states of mid-transformation between human and ghost forms. “I know you know his secret.”

Now Mr. Masters’ expression closed off. The room started to get marginally hotter. “You’ll need to spell it out for me.”

“Fine. I’ll spell it out for you.

“You disappear at odd times during town hall meetings; there have been reports of flashes of light that come from your office or mansion late at night; there are large mutant ghost creatures that scuttle around on your property yet you only own two cats and don’t have any sort of job that works with animals.” Finding that last point had truly been the final nail in the coffin. And almost the last nail in his coffin when they spotted him taking pictures a couple nights back. Totally worth it though.

The air in the room became almost stifling with heat. “And?” Mr. Masters asked, sitting rigidly. His cat had long run out of the room.

“And?” Wes threw his hands in the air. “You’re being silenced by Fenton’s lackeys for trying to tell everyone who he is!”

There was an abrupt drop in temperature. Mr. Masters blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

Wes nodded. “You figured out Danny Fenton’s identity back when you were first elected, didn’t you? And when you tried reasoning with him that it was better to let everyone know the truth he’s been sending his animal ghost buddies to mess with you!”

Mr. Masters sagged back into his chair with a sigh. Wes ignored it and continued his speech.

“So help me, Mayor Masters, together we can get Fenton to finally reveal himself and have everyone know who their ‘town hero’ really is!” And subsequently prove to everyone at school that he was right the whole time and no one should ever doubt his observational skills again.

Silence filled the room for a moment. Mr. Masters hummed, picking up all seven pictures laid out in front of him. “Are these your only copies?”

Wes chuckled nervously. “Yeah, I only really had my polaroid on me when I had the opportunity to take those, but I could probably make you some. I’ve got the film reel right here!” He held out a small roll of film and Mr. Masters shuffled the photos into one hand before gingerly holding the film in his now free hand.

“And did you have any incriminating photos or other such material?”

Wes grumbled. “I did before Fenton broke my last digital camera. Didn’t get to upload anything to my hard drive before he blasted it to pieces.” He shook his head and gave Mr. Masters a determined grin. “But if we work together, I’m sure we can get even more.”

There was a niggling feeling in the back of Wes’ head as he watched the mayor stare unblinking at the damning evidence in his hands. He could’ve sworn he saw the man’s eyes flicker red for a moment before he moved his gaze back to Wes. “Well, you’ve certainly brought me some important topics to consider for the future. Before we start this partnership however, I believe there’s something that needs to be addressed.”

Mr. Masters held the photos and film over the side of his desk, directly above the trash can.

They burst into flames.

“Shit!” Wes grabbed the half-full glass of water on the desk and was about to pour it over the fire—holy shit was it glowing pink?—when an invisible force grabbed his wrist in an iron grip. “What the hell?! Are we being attacked?!” He grabbed the invisible force and tried to pry it off him, but he hardly even moved it. Wes kept struggling until he noticed the fire dying out on its own and Mr. Masters’ hands completely free of any burns.

Mr. Masters tipped his hands inward and let the ashes of Wes’ hard work slowly flutter down into the can.

“You see, I’ve been looking for a more reliable source of information on my little badger. Bugging his home and school clothes only worked so well until he found them all and started sweeping for them regularly.” Bugs? Like the kind that watch and listen in on people? He put those in Fenton’s house? “I think you’ll be just perfect for the job, Mr. Weston.”

“Did you- what- wait just a minute.” Wes took a deep breath and held Mr. Master’s gaze. “Are we or are we not being attacked by ghosts right now?”

Mr. Masters rolled his eyes and the invisible restraint disappeared from his wrist. Wes’ pulled his hand back too far in surprise and the glass slipped from his hand. His face paled as he watched it stop in midair without spilling a single drop before floating back to its place on the desk.

The large office chair was pulled back for a moment and directly in front of it, the Wisconsin Ghost himself, Vlad Plasmius appeared, a smug grin on his fanged lips.

“You’re in no danger, for the moment at least. Though I would suggest listening to the Mayor if you want it to stay that way,” the ghost said as he gracefully sat down. A fluffier cat than before entered the room and hopped onto the desk. Plasmius started petting it absentmindedly. Wes swallowed as he contemplated his options.

There wasn’t much of a choice at all; if he wanted to avoid becoming the next star victim in a true crime podcast then he had to agree to their terms. But Wes knew, in time, he would find a way to tell the general public about the ghost and mayor working together.

And if Mr. Masters really had been bugging Fenton’s house, then maybe he’d find enough sensitive and, likely illegal, data to anonymously send to the Amity Park News. Sure, he’d never get the credit for it and most likely endanger his own life, but the thought of watching the man and ghost’s empire of lies and corruption fall around them while they scramble to do damage control and rage when they can’t find the culprit was too good an opportunity to pass up.

“Do we have an agreement then?” Mr. Masters asked, a smug grin nearly identical to Plasmius’ on his face.

He can do this. It might take a while, but eventually, Masters and Plasmius would be held accountable and he’d be seen as a hero. His friends and family and teachers would all speak of him with pride and awe and he wouldn’t be six feet under or haunting his school basketball court. He can do this!

Wes grimaced, but stuck out his hand. “We do.”

Mr. Masters shook his hand in a firm grip before leaning down closer to speak in a low tone. “And remember, should you betray us…”

Plasmius chuckled. “Well, let’s just say, I like to be… creative.” He held up a hand and a small flame danced along his gloved palm, changing shape every few seconds into various medical tools. “And I haven’t had much time to study human anatomy recently.”

A shudder ran down Wes’ spine and he let out a nervous chuckle. “When do I start?”

[five-rivers]

Hobbies

Phic phight! @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy

A series of vignettes about Danny having various hobbies.

(Master the Orb)

Danny exhaled slowly as the ice built up between his hands.  Each new layer glittered in the ghostlight cast by the overhead ambient ectoplasm, embedding complex patterns in the overall piece as new layers built up over it.

“Very good, Great One,” rumbled Frostbite behind his shoulder.  “Your control has improved immensely.”

Danny inhaled equally slowly, examining his work so far but not adding to it quite yet.  “I don’t know.  It looks a little lopsided.”

“Mmm, it looks fine to me.  Especially for such an early attempt.”

Danny sighed, exhaling the ice he had built up with his breath.  “So, it is lopsided.”

“Consider it practice,” said Frostbite, encouragingly. “It takes time to master art of any kind.”

“Humans do ice sculpture, too,” mumbled Danny. “They get really good, too.  I’ve seen pictures.  And videos.  They don’t even have ice powers.”  He rubbed his thumb over the surface, smoothing over a slightly rougher patch.

“That may be true,” said Frostbite, “but, again, you just started, Great One.  You have only had your powers for a little while.  Give yourself some support.”

Danny shrugged.  “I guess it isn’t something my life depends on, so I can relax about it.” He built up another layer of ice. “This is oddly therapeutic, and I don’t say therapeutic lightly.  You know Jazz.”

“I do indeed,” said Frostbite, somewhat ruefully, head half-bowed.  

Jazz could be a force of nature, even more so than ice powers.

He held the ice orb up to the light.  It caught on the patterns he had placed there. Fractals were the easiest.  He was hoping that if he got better, he’d be able to make real sculptures with patterns in them, instead of just orbs.  

But, first, he had to master the orb.  Just like how when drawing you had to do circles first.  Circle. Orb.

Ooorb.  Yep.  

The controlled application of ice.  The evenness of the internal patterns.  The solidity, density, and durability.  

His orb was… not very orblike, despite what Frostbite said.  Frostbite probably thought he was making so flat on purpose.  

Yeah.  He was terrible at this.  

He was having fun, though.  

.

.

 (Furnace)

“You’re taking up glass blowing?” asked Tucker, surprised.

“Yeah?  Is there a problem?” asked Danny, reaching over to stop his friend from accidentally drawing a line of orange sharpie across his poster on the themes in Macbeth.

“No!” said Tucker, quickly.  “But, like, why?  It just seems… unlike you.”

“Exactly,” said Danny, nodding sharply.  “It has absolutely nothing to do with my powers and nothing to do with my family.  Plus, I had a coupon.”

“For glass blowing?”

“It was a groupon,” said Danny.  “For making Christmas tree ornaments.  I’m going to do it with Jazz.”

“But, Danny,” said Sam, looking over from where she was working on her own poster about Twelfth Night, “glass blowing, uh, involves a lot of heat.”

“Sure?”

“Danny, you have an ice core.”

“Ah,” said Danny.  “Well.   I’ve got to use that groupon.  If it doesn’t work out, it’s only the once, right?”

.

“Oh my gosh,” said Danny, wringing sweat out of his t-shirt.  “That was awesome!”  He giggled to himself and peaked into the annealer again.  “So awesome!”

“Uh huh,” said Jazz.  Her attempts had been… rather less successful than Danny’s, partially because she was trying so hard to make them perfect.  But she had managed a few little baubles, nonetheless.  “I think these’ll all be good for the tree. Assuming we get one.”

“And it isn’t set on fire.”

“Oh, yeah, that was a bad year.”

He squeaked open the annealer again, only closing it when the instructor lightly scolded him.  “They’re so terrible and lopsided,” said Danny.  

“Hey,” said Jazz.  “Mine are fine.”

“I know!  I was talking about mine.”

“Ah, okay then.  I agree.”

“You aren’t supposed to agree.”

“What, you want me to lie?  And after you said it first?”

“No,” said Danny.  “But you could be nicer about it.”

“I’m your sister, what do you expect?”

.

.

 (Lung Capacity)

Danny let the last note trail off to complete silence. He stared apprehensively at the assembled student body.  Curse Mr. Lancer’s extra credit talent show assignment.  Any minute now, they’d start laughing at him.  

What was he thinking?  He’d just watched a few YouTube tutorials on breath control, and he thought he could come up here and sing in front of people?  He was a moron, and—

Sam and Tucker started cheering wildly, followed rapidly by everyone else in the gym.  

Okay.  What?

Sam and Tucker, following impulses known only to overexcited teenagers, swarmed up the stage and attacking Danny.  

“Why didn’t you tell us you could sing like that?” demanded Sam.  

“When did you learn?” asked Tucker, doing his level best to noogie Danny.  “Why did you learn?”

“I wanted to improve my, you know, wail,” muttered Danny, “and all the breath control YouTube videos either had to do with diving or singing, so…”  He did a little head wiggle to illustrate his point and also dislodge Tucker.  

“I just can’t believe you kept this a secret from us,” said Sam.  

Danny snorted and took a sort of half bow before attempting to leave the stage.  “My dudes, I am basically made of secrets.”

“Encore!” screamed someone who clearly hated him.  

“Oh, no,” said Danny, bracing himself against Sam and Tucker who were pushing him back into the middle of the stage.  “No encore.  I don’t do encores.”

But now people were chanting.  Chanting.  

“Come on, Danny,” said Tucker.  “Just once!”

“Yeah, these are your fifteen minutes of fame!”

“I had those already!  Multiple times!”

“That was Poindexter.”

“And now it can be you.”

Danny reluctantly took the microphone back off the stand.

.

.

 (Letterhead)

The ink was thick, almost creamy, and paint-like. It was the ectoplasm mix, which also gave it a rich, rosy glow.  

Danny was practicing ghost calligraphy.  Well, one particular subset of ghost calligraphy, one which put special emphasis on the color of the letters as well as how they fit together.  

It was a totally useless hobby.  But it was… not exactly calming.  No.  He’d gotten way too angry about poorly formed arcs and crooked lines a couple of times.  So. Yeah.  Not calming.  But… meditative.  Meditative. And there was something satisfying about seeing the finished product.  

Plus, if he framed his better finished work, they made for good presents for weirdo ghosts.

“You misspelled this,” drawled Ghost Writer.  

“No, I didn’t.”

“Keuwii only has one kei.”

“This is only one kei.”

“What’s this, then?”

“It’s a flourish.”

“A flourish.”

Danny rolled his eyes.  “Everyone’s a critic.  If you don’t want it—”

“I didn’t say that.”

Danny raised an eyebrow.  

Ghost Writer made a show of rolling his eyes. “Very well.  Do you have one for my half-brother Randy.  Perhaps one that says something along the lines of ‘idiot?’”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

.

.

 (Babies on Fire)

“Danny,” said Jazz.  “What are you doing up at three in the morning with a lighter? And… yarn?  Is that yarn?”

“Dad wanted me to learn how to sew,” said Danny, “but I don’t like needles, not the sharp ones, anyway.”

“You get stitches every other week,” pointed out Jazz.

“Exactly,” said Danny, gesturing with the lighter.  “So, I decided to look into, you know, knitting. And I was on knitting websites, and having, you know, a pretty good time with that, but then I found out about the babies.”

“The babies.”

“The babies,” said Danny, seriously.  “And the blankets that are on fire.  It depends on the yarn, you see.  If the yarn is the wrong kind of yarn, if it catches on fire, the blanket can melt onto the baby.  It’s terrible.  Just terrible.”

“I kind of think that if the blanket is on fire you have bigger problems,” said Jazz.  She took a step closer to her obviously insane younger brother.  “Are you… testing the yarn?”

“I have to, Jazz.  It’s for the babies.”

“Alright,” said Jazz.  “You are going to limit it to just the yarn in our house, right?”

“But we don’t have any babies.”

“Okay, that didn’t answer my question, but, like…” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Since we don’t have any babies here, why are you testing the yarn?”

“Because we might have babies here in the future,” said Danny.  “Or I might knit something and give it to someone as a gift and then they give it to their baby.  Oh my gosh, I’d feel so guilty.”

“I’d be more worried about the toxic waste in our basement,” said Jazz, which was exactly the wrong thing to say to a sleep-deprived half-ghost on the edge of an Obsession-fueled breakdown.  Danny vanished in a blur, trailing yarn behind him. Jazz, who had only gotten up for a glass of water, cursed under her breath.

.

.

 (Before the Ball)

“I’m so, so sorry, Dora,” said Danny, holding back something adjacent to laughter.  

Dora laughed, more openly.  “It is fine, Sir Phantom.  Even now, you are better than my brother.”

“Am I really?  Your brother?  Who was raised to do this?”

“Well,” said Dora, letting go and stepping back out of the range of Danny’s feet.  Which were, evidently, both left feet.  “No, I’m afraid, but it is amusing to say, isn’t it?”  She pressed her fingers to her lips, suppressing more laughter.  

“Yeah, it is,” admitted Danny.  

“In any case, you are far more graceful concerning your mistakes than he ever was.  More gallant. A better representative of chivalry altogether.”  She patted the shoulders of his shirt.  

“Thanks,” said Danny.  “Do you think that I’ll be, uh, ready in time for the party?”

“It’s more than a party,” said Dora.  “You’re being officially knighted.  You’ll be a peer of the realm.”

“Aha,” said Danny.  “Yeah.  I don’t… what?  Really? That’s a thing?”

“You thought I was joking?”

“No,” said Danny, drawing out the word.  He had, in fact, thought she was joking and only accepted her offer to teach him how to dance because he thought it sounded like fun and like it might take his mind off his problems.  “Of course not.  So. Dancing.  Important.  For first impressions?”

“Everyone already knows you, Phantom,” said the knight assigned as Dora’s bodyguard.  “But dancing is surprisingly useful for swordplay.  Which you need all the help you can get at.”

“You said I was getting better.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re good.”

“Ouch.”

.

.

 (Time)

“I don’t have time for a hobby,” complained Danny through the Fenton Phones.  “Maybe if the ghosts let up a bit—” He zapped one of said ghosts.  

“Danny, are you fighting ghosts right now?”

“Yeah.  That’s my point.”

“Oh my god, get off the phone.”

“No way!  This is the only time I can call you, what with all of your classes.”

“Danny…” said Jazz, clearly exasperated.  He took advantage of the lull in the conversation to blast a few more ghosts.  

“I’m fine Jazz.”

“You are not fine.  You are, like, ten thousand miles away from fine.  When was the last time you even slept through the night?”

“Eh,” said Danny.  “Recently?”

“You need to take more time for yourself.”

Danny sighed and captured the last ghost.  “Maybe catching ghosts is my hobby.”

“Catching ghosts is your self-imposed penance for doing something that isn’t even your fault.  Not a hobby.”

“Okay, okay.  I’ll talk to you on Wednesday, same time.”

“Danny, don’t—”

He hung up.  

“Ugh,” said Danny.  “I guess I need to find a hobby.  Have to find time to find a hobby.”

“Perhaps I could be of help.”

“Ah!”  Danny jolted forward, dropping his phone.  

Clockwork gestured with one hand, and the phone dropped back into Danny’s hands from above.  

“Ohhh my ghost, why are you here?”

“You were just talking about finding time.  And now I’m here.”

“Good timing, I guess?”

“Only the best,” said Clockwork, evenly.  “But we were speaking of hobbies.  Might I suggest ice sculpture?  Your friends in the Far Frozen would be more than happy to teach you...”

[1-the-2-little-3-artist]

They should get ice cream suggested @wsoupofpain

They should do direct action suggested @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy

Thank you all for the suggestions,to be honest i enjoyed my time drawing them.

[wannabee-in-progress]

Happy (slightly belated) Christmas Truce @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy​!!

The piece I did was actually a bit of a combination of two of your prompts which were 

1. any kind of vampire content (vampire-flavoured ghost hunger counts) 2. halfas: now with 50% more body horror!

It’s definitely not perfect but i hope you like it~ 

[fuckthisappinparticular]

After reading @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy 's theory on half ghosts, I'm wondering, could their human halves fuse with other ghosts?

They can be possesed, as showed in the episode with Poindexter, so can they fuse with other ghosts? What would the relations between them be? Can their ghost halves fuse with another human?

[phantomphangphucker]

Phic Phight - Young Guns With Guns

@ishouldgetatumbler @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy @faedemon @miss-nov @summerssixecho @torscrawls

Valerie’s actually managed to get college placement lined up, which means she’s got to get a Red Huntress replacement lined up too. Unfortunately every good choice is chaotic.

That single simple letter changed so much for her, could change so much. She’s spent the past year working her ass off to get her grades up, probably giving her a seriously long term case of sleep deprivation due to ghosts still being an issue, but she’s baffled it actually worked out. She had been fully expecting nothing but rejection, instead she got in at her first pick college and it’s nanotechnology and nanoscience bachelors program; meaning she didn’t even have to settle for her second choice bachelors of science.

She had honestly cried a little, danced, jumped, went ghost hunting just for the joy of it. Phantom probably didn’t appreciate her deciding to chase It around for the heck of it, or maybe It did since it was always hard to tell with that ghost and Its goddamn puns. Plus, she knew that It knew that she knew she couldn’t actually take It down in a fight. 

She might be the only half decent ghost hunter in Amity but Phantom was beyond human ability to deal with. Which yeah, meant there was someone to deal with other absurdly powerful ghosts, but It was still a damn ghost and she had no interest in leaving all of Amity’s ghost issues in Its dead hands. Amity needs to have a human protector too. She had debated not even trying to leave Amity genuinely, to go to college; but she promised her dad she’d at least ty, that she wouldn’t give up on a ‘normal’ future. Frankly even if she does get her degree there’s zero chance of her staying gone and being ‘normal’, she loved being the Red Huntress and couldn’t see her giving it up full. Zone, she basically picked her program to help her do a better job as a ghost hunter. Knowing better how to use the nanobots and machinery that flowed through her veins would be a dream, and technically self preservations since she currently couldn’t do too much if something went majorly wrong with them. She knew enough and had enough skill to use them and modify them but she wasn’t the expert she wanted to be. This, this acceptance letter would change that, let her study nanotechnology. Even if any studying or work she did with her own self would have to be private and not actually used for school; last thing she wanted was to give someone a very stupid idea. Same reason she wasn’t about to try to suit someone up exactly like she was, heck she’s pretty sure the nanobots are very much fused to her, putting someone else in that same situation just because she wanted to go to college would be incredibly mean and just a shitty thing to do. 

So...

She refuses to leave Amity without an actually decent and not insane (Maddie and Jack) ghost hunter and she also can’t refuse to go to her ideal college. She can’t give away her suit, and wouldn’t even if she could, and she’s not going to try and basically ‘infect’ someone like what that asshole dirty bastard half ghost Vlad did. She needed a stand in, a temporary worker if you will, for at least a few years. Preferable someone she wouldn’t have to actually train and who wouldn’t either be extremely bigoted to the point of being stupid -again, Jack and Maddie- or so pro-ghost they’d be leiniate on the spooks. Unfortunately that eliminated practically everyone who was actually physically capable of fighting ghosts at all. Pretty much every adult and teen involved in sports had this weird hero worship mascot thing for Phantom and ghosts in general, many having out right crushes *cough cough* Paulina and Dash *cough cough*. That one guy who runs the little martial arts place wouldn’t be half bad but he was... a little bit insane. She could see him causing a lot of damages. There was also the fact that whoever would have to deal with Vlad, meaning they needed to be distrustful of that jerk. Unfortunately, nearly the whole town actually supports that man as mayor now since he kept the government on a leash and got funding for all the damages. Powerful people with money could get away with being awful shit people. 

... Though... 

She can think of someone who not only wouldn’t be played by Vlad but also wouldn’t exactly need training. That someone being Danny of course. Danny probably managed to cause more suffering and annoyance to Vlad than Vlad had ever caused her, and he would just laugh in Vlad’s face if the guy tried manipulating him, like he usually did. Sometimes she wonders if Danny actually knows what Vlad is. Then Danny, and his friends really, did have Fenton training and all of them were in really good shape these days. The only problem with Danny and his friends, was that they were staunchly pro-ghost and had been so before anyone else really. But, and this is a big but, they were also pro-ghost hunting. They were pro-ghost in more of a ‘ghosts are just like people and demonising them universally is dumb. Some are assholes though’ kind of way. Which... was a lot more positive than her view of ghosts, them being mostly shit stirrers who wanted to mess with the living and their personhood was questionable. 

Sam she wouldn’t even consider, she’d heard that girl justify UnderGrowth’s takeover of the town on multiple occasions, apparently she even helped the ghost with that. Valerie never understood how that girl could be both incredibly holier than thou moral and incredibly ‘humans are weeds’ immoral. 

And Tucker? Tucker should not be allowed to ever have any amount of real power, authority, or control over people. Ever. Whenever she thinks of that guy having any kind of power she can taste sand in her mouth in a really revolting way, she’s got no clue why that happens but she ain’t gonna play stupid games. 

Danny... might be a little crazy, and weird, and creepy, and stupid, but she couldn’t really think of a reason why him being what’s practically a vigilant would be bad. Zone, with how he intentionally pissed off Dash so Dash would only target him, and how protective he could be; she’s kinda surprised he wasn’t already trying to be a masked hero or whatever. Her best guess is that he didn’t want to deal with his parents if they ever found out or he just didn’t want to be ‘like them’. Fair enough. But she’s kinda low on options here. 

Sure fine maybe there were other options but, screw her, she liked Danny and she’d rather hand shit off to him than someone she’s not already friendly with. Plus there was the fact that Danny said ‘Ancients no’ like it was the obvious answer whenever anyone asked if he was leaving Amity. For whatever reason he liked this town and it’s weird ass ghost problem more than most, the fact that anyone did at all was already kinda weird. Well it meant she didn’t really have to worry about him not sticking around here, same as she really didn’t have to worry about how to track Danny down. Since, like her, he wound up getting work at the Nasty Burger, in his words ‘it’s the only place that would hire even a corpse or a Fenton’ which yeah, lots of places wouldn’t hire any Fenton purely for being a Fenton.

And if she remembers properly he should be working closing shift tonight. Nice.

Getting up and stretching, “why do I feel like getting him to agree to wear a disguise is going to more difficult than actually getting him to say yes?”, he would absolutely be the type to just rip off a mask for the dramatics of it. Popping out of her room and grinning at her dad, “I’m going out, to talk to a Fenton, just not the crazy ones, about keeping an eye on those parents of his”.

Damon blinks, putting down his book, “are the Fenton’s planning to do something crazy again?”.

Valerie shakes her head, grinning now and holding up the little envelope, “no, but someone’s gotta keep an eye on them if I’m going”.

His eyes widening instantly, book getting abandoned as he jumps up to run over and hug, “congrats! You got in! I knew you could do it!”, pulling back and pointing at her face, “now I don’t want you worrying about costs, you do still have a college fund, and I don’t want you worrying about ghosts either, missy”.

Valerie flushing, “I know I know, that’s part of why I want to go see Danny”.

“Are you giving him your suit? I don’t really want that going with you”.

“Dad, you know I can’t physically do that”.

“I know, I know, that won’t stop me from asking if you’ve figured out a way to”.

She sighs at him, shaking her head. It did kind of bother her that he had it in his head that she should want her suit ripped out of her, that she was trying to figure out how to do that. The suit was part of her as a person too, why would she want to lose it and part of what makes Valerie Valerie?

He nods strongly to himself, “I’m getting a cake”.

“Dad no-”.

“It will be cake time”.

“Dad-”.

“It will be the most audacious one I can find”.

Valerie buries her head in her hands with a laugh, “ask Paulina to make a Phantom-themed one, that was the worst thing I’ve ever seen”. Even Damon cringes, because yeah that woman was still obsessed over a dead guy.

Damon shaking his head, “it will not be ghost themed. Tech perhaps?”, and hums to himself, tapping his chin before making shooing motions at her, “if trying to wrangle that boy, or man I should say, into spying on his parents makes you more willing to go then go on”.

“There’s no way this place should be without a non-crazy human ghost hunter”.

“Heck, I’ll take up your guns if that gets you to go”.

“Dad no, you have terrible balance, Danny’s is actually a bit terrifying”. Honestly she swears that gravity doesn’t affect Danny the way it should, which if that was actually true it would one hundred percent be because of that accident his parents basically caused. Either way she moves to the door waving at him, “please don’t spend too much on the cake? Please?”. He just rolls his eyes at her as she leaves. (He absolutely did wind up spending more than she’d like on the cake, it looked like it was made out of techno Lego blocks).

It takes her all of three minutes to get to the Nasty Burgers back parking lot, she thinks that’s a new record or almost a new record, man she loves seeing improvements…. Shit she’s totally going to have to take full advantage of the on-campus gym purely to make sure she stays in shape. Maybe she should ask Sam for pointers on that? She still has no clue how that girl is so ridiculously fit without do any extracurriculars during school. She out bench pressed Dash once, it was terrifying and impressive.

“Dude, I asked for goddamn Reddened Chicken Strips, not Fenton Froth! Those aren’t even in the same food group!”.

Valerie shakes her head sympathetically as she walks in through the doors. Man she would absolutely not miss having to deal with asshole customers.

“You know? Fuck this shit. Give me back my money, hell, give me all your damn money”.

What. She goes stock still, as the guy pulls an actual normal human gun and points it in Danny’s face. Shit. How should she deal with this? How could she even? She fights ghosts! With supernatural guns and a hoverboard! Not a cops badge and a freaking Glock or whatever! Quickly ducking under a table, she has no clue how her nano bots would handle her getting shot by a regular human bullet. Would it even recognise the injury since it wasn’t ectoplasmicly based? Could it even repair non-ectoplasmic injuries in the first place?! This is what she means by she needs to be more of an expert on the stuff!

Then Danny, typical fucking insane stupid Danny, says something horrifically stupid, “whatcha gonna do? Shoot me?”, scoffing like that’s ever remotely what you should do with a gun to your face, Danny might be a little too desensitised to weapons, “you can't kill me because then I'll just turn into ghost, and you'll have a Real problem on your hands because I will absolutely haunt your ass to the Zone and back. No, we need to work this out another way”.

“The only way this is working out is if you give me all the damn money! They don’t even pay you enough to put up a fight anyways”.

“I happen to actually like this place and what? Are you offering me a paycheck? No? Then get fucked and go get lost in the sauce or something, cause yeah I definitely ain’t paid to deal with your poorly packaged human shit”.

On one hand, this level of ‘I don’t care’ and reckless self endangerment was kinda necessary for her job but he doesn’t even have on a helmet and this isn’t a freaking ghost! Should she try throwing a chair at the robber? And where the hell was the manager? Other employees? Oh don’t tell her that Danny agreed to work alone like a dumbass, the manager was probably off fucking gambling again, jerk.

The robber squawks, “what?!? Dude this is a real gun!”.

“You say that like I care. You know what else is real? This bored unimpressed face, go try to show off how big your dick is somewhere else”.

Oh zone damn it, Danny. At this rate he’s going to get himself shot.

“This isn’t even a big gun!”.

“So what you’re saying is it’s the perfect size for you”.

And then the shot rings out, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Fuck FUCK! Valerie popping up, ghost hunter gun in hand only to see Danny having apparently blocked the goddamn near point blank shot with a fucking tray. How???? Danny then smacks the guy, one-handed, with said tray, “bad, I’d like to keep my pretty face thank you very much, it’s my money maker”.

Valerie blurting out, “what the Zone!”.

The robber guy stumbles back, looking from the tray-wielding Danny to Valerie and her red and black gun, “ah fuck”, backing up a bit and looking for an exit that she wasn’t literally right beside it. Like hell she’s letting some jackass that tried to shoot Danny leave that easily.

Her snarling, “don’t even try it, asshole”, and keeps her gun on him. Danny apparently has a similar idea, grabbing a fist full of nasty sauce packets, “I will set these on fire and blow all of us up, all my fucks have flowneth off. I’m over my fuck budget and I’m now in fucking debt!”.

Both the robber and Valerie still, slowly staring at Danny. Valerie blinking harshly, “Danny, put those down”.

He pouts at her, “no. It’ll scratch my explosive itch”.

“Danny if you do that then he’ll haunt you and you’ll be the one with the problems”. She’s slightly rethinking trying to make a stand-in of him. He had the guts but come on!

Danny blinks like he hadn’t thought of that, “oh right, I mean… what’s another ghost wanting to put me on their shit list? Am I right?”, and holds the sauce packets up a little higher, and pulls a blow torch out from under the counter.

Why… was there a freaking blowtorch there??? It wasn’t there yesterday??? “Where did you get that”.

Danny shrugs, turning the blowtorch on, the flames are loud, “Brittney broke her lighter, brought this instead as a gag”.

The robber drops his gun and puts his hands, “nope nope nope, I’m not playing chicken with that. Make a citizens arrest or whatever”.

Danny smirks, “oh I don’t know, I kinda want to blow you up now and the blowtorch is already on”, and wiggles the blowtorch around, “eh? Eh? Eh? Come on, it’ll be fun. We could start a fireworks show out of building pieces?”.

Valerie glares before hurling her gun at his head, his neck cracking a little when his head tilts as the gun bounces off of his skull. “Stop it, you little shit”, and stomps over to the guy who smartly doesn't move. At least she does actually have handcuffs, they’re made for ghosts but whatever, the guy gets handcuffed aggressively, “don’t be a dumbass before you make Danny become more of a dumbass”.

Danny apparently takes offence to that like he has any right to, “hey!”. At least he’s put the blowtorch back.

…

What he didn’t do was turn the damn thing off, the counter is now on fire. “Danny the counter!”.

Danny looking down at the slight burning and flicker of flames, “okay that was stupid, note to self don’t handle flammables on forty two hours of sleep deprivation”.

“Well put it out!”.

The robber grumbles, “I made a mistake, lord forgive me and don’t let me get burned to death by an overworked underpaid fast food employee”.

Danny points at the guy, instead of dealing with the flames, “that’s what you get for trying to shot me! And! For trying to steal money from the bestest nastiest restaurant in town!”.

“Why are you throwing the damn slogan at him! Put out the fire Danny!”.

Danny slams his hand directly into the fire, “no!”, and then, “ow!”, and that finally makes him deal with it by smashing his hand, that is full of nasty sauce packets, into the flames. Smacking his hands on the fire a couple of times before realising what he’s done, going wide-eyed, “oh shit”. The robber is crying. Danny’s over the counter in a second grabbing the robber and her by the arm and fucking booking it. It takes her a bit to get her footing and to also run of her own volition; Danny is notably faster than her.

The explosion blows out a wall, all three of them getting mildly covered in rubble, Valerie sticking her head out… the blowtorch is still on, looking back at Danny, “you stay put while I turn off your fuck up. Maine is gonna be so pissed”.

“Hey, he should have known better than to let anyone work a closing shift alone, especially me”.

“You should know better than to agree to doing that!”, her huffing and running off to get the blowtorch, getting slightly covered in ash as she does so. Stupid Danny. By the time she’s gotten back Danny’s just shaking the handcuffed robber back and forth blaming him for damaging the best fast food joint in town. “Danny stop that, before you give him whiplash”.

“He deserves it!”. The robber just groans and then passes out. That at least gets Danny to stop, “shit, did I kill him?”, and then sighing in relief at the guy clearly still breathing, dropping the man in an uncomfortable looking heap on the ground. Then looking to Valerie, “so besides being my unwitting audience, why’d you come by? You don’t usually get your Nasty on when you don’t work?”.

She blinks, giving him a disgusted look, “never say that again, ew”, sighing, “well I was going to brag about my college acception but I’m seriously reconsidering that”.

He brightens up immediately, it’s almost blinding, “oh! Congrats! You hanging up the hoverboard then?”.

“More like take a vacation- hey wait what!”, scowling at him and sticking her arms out to the side, “since when have you known!?!”.

“You threw a red and black ecto-gun at my head, I’m dumb not stupid! And who the fuck else would have ghost handcuffs just on their person?! Even my folks don’t do that!”.

“Damn you!”, Valerie groans into her hands, “you are way too casual about this to have just found out”.

“Val, my uncles a psycho half ghost, there’s a portal to a death dimension under my bedroom, one of my friends is adopted by a genocidal plant god and the others a reincarnated pharaoh. You could reveal you’re literally god themselves and Lucifer somehow sharing the same body and I wouldn’t be phased”.

There was so much wrong with all of that. “That’s really messed up”,

“I know!”.

What is she supposed to do with this? With him? Also though… “you know about Vlad? And what the zone is wrong with Sam and Tucker?!?”.

Danny snorts, “too much”, shrugging, “and yeah, that guys abducted me to try and get me to be his happy son way too many times not to notice he was freaky. Also, his super illegal creepy underground lab doesn’t have doors, how would he get in there if he wasn’t spooky”.

“How do you know he even has a lab if there’s no doors?”.

“Eh play enough stupid games and get him to blast you through enough walls and you’ll find it”.

… It’s a miracle Danny hasn’t gotten himself killed. Making him her replacement might just improve his life’s survivability, that’s was so screwed up. Huffing and sticking a hand out down to him, “well if you’re going to annoy one sorta ghost, why not annoy all of them and be my replacement?”.

He blinks at her before laughing loudly, rocking back a little, “you fucking crazy hunter, or huntress whatever”, and grabs her hand to pull himself up, dragging the robber guy up with him in one hand, “eh fuck it, why not? Note, I have no clue how your suit works beyond breaking the law of physics and matter”.

She shakes her head at him, “I’m not giving you my suit, dummy”.

“So you’re trying to employ me as your replacement but making me fight naked, got it”.

“Ew!”, she whacks him over the head for that. Crossing her arms at him, “I’ll just make you something similar, and you can help with that, you jerk”, rolling her eyes, “you know ghost hunter tech so it’s whatever and it’s not like I started out with a freaking nanobot suit”.

“Can it be white and black, you know, the total opposite of Phantom’s? Since I’m the living Danny?”.

Why did she think this was a good idea? “You, are so stupid”, looking to the robber, “we should take him to the jailhouse”.

Danny looking down at the unconscious man, “I mean, probably? He’s so gonna think this was just a really weird fever dream”.

“And whose fault is that? You might cause more chaos than the ghosts do”.

“Sounds like that’s a you problem, and a town problem”.

Valerie sighs, “at least try to keep the other Fenton’s from causing chaos”, starting to walk off towards the jailhouse, Danny hoisting the guy up onto his shoulder in a fireman carry.

Him grumbling, “you say that like I can control them”, tilting his head, “wait does this mean Vlad’s gonna start paying me? Paying me in a way that isn’t clearly a bribe?”, snickering, “he’s gonna be so unimpressed you went with me of all people”.

Valerie smirking to herself, “that’s half the point. I couldn’t pick someone who’d actually trust that lying snake”.

“He’s more of a bat than a snake, you know, the whole knock off vampire thing he’s got going on”.

“Zone you’re a dumbass”.

The cheeky smirk is audible in his response, “I know”.

Was Vlad mad about her choice? Absolutely. Was she? Absolutely not. Regardless of being at college she tried to keep up to date with what’s going on in Amity, Danny was absolutely terrorising the wealthy half dead man. The random insults he was putting into practically every public interview or announcement was making the feud between the mayor and ‘Monochrome’ very public and everyone was debating why Vlad even employed this guy and where the Red Huntress found him.

Vlad kept calling her and offering to pay for things just to get her back sooner and apparently ‘Monochrome’ fighting Phantom really annoyed Vlad, which to be fair what she’s seen of those little ‘chases’ was usually really absurd. ‘Monochrome’ dumped melted cheese on the ghost once and then bailed, it did make Technus confused enough that Phantom caught the other ghost easily though.

She’s got no clue how Danny convinced everyone that Monochrome wasn’t an Amity native. That was just baffling but did help with the ‘secret identity’ thing. She’d definitely not realised just how much Danny looked exactly like Phantom though, so she officially actually agrees with Jack’s and Maddie’s insane theory that Phantom did actually copy their son’s appearance. She’d bet her pocket change that Phantom’s real face was some kind of eldritch horror abomination, and copying Danny was to seem more ‘human’; stupid manipulative ghosts.

At least it did seem Amity was in good, if chaotic, hands and Danny was actually keeping the damn suit on and the Fenton’s were actually respecting him. Danny’d called and bragged about that, she’d been happy for him.

Maybe…

Maybe he’d continue doing it, even when she got back, even if he seemed to view it as very firmly temporary in a way that almost seemed… sad.

End.

Prompts: Well, you can't kill me because then I'll turn into ghost, and you'll have a Real problem on your hands. No, we need to work this out another way. The only option left was surrender All Amity Parkers know to never work a closing shift alone. How could the wrong Nasty Burger order lead to this? Valerie got accepted at her desired college. Since she'll be leaving Amity Park, she needs to find a new replacement to keep the ghosts at bay while she's gone. Someone tries to rob the Nasty Burger but sadly for them the person working the register happens to be a newly employed Danny Fenton. Danny has an hour left of his shift and does not have enough energy left to play nice.

[moipale]

this kind of hunger isn’t for gas station sushi

A Danny Phantom fanfiction, written for Phic Phight 2020 (@phicphight). Prompt from @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy, or RebelVampire666 on AO3.

this kind of hunger isn’t for gas station sushi

Summary:  “Well, fuck,” Tucker says, clenching one fist. Sam rests a hand on his knee comfortingly. “So that’s it, then. I’m for real a vampire.”

Genre: Supernatural

Wordcount: 1774

Oneshot, Complete

Read it on AO3 here!

[nocturna-starr]

Losing Hope

Prompter: @idiot-cheesehead-archenemy

Prompt: Tucker is turned into a vampire

Length: 1718

Warnings: Implications

The motel room was cold and smelled like something had recently died in it. Yet this place was one of the few he could afford with his meagre savings and lack of ID. Here he could hang out until he could fix what was wrong with him.

It would be a while before anyone would even look for him. His parents believed he was sleeping over at Sam's while his friends believed he was at home sick. School had let out two weeks ago so there were going to be no nosy teachers questioning his whereabouts. He was home free.

Tucker Foley threw himself onto his bed. It creaked from all of his weight. He threw his bag against the wall, accidentally ripping part of the old floral wallpaper. The comforter smelled of mould. He was almost afraid to see the sheets beneath. At least it meant that maids don't come up here often. He wouldn't be noticed if he snuck back in...

He picked up the old remote on his bedside table. Half of the buttons were stuck, but it would have to do for now. He turned on the television.

The news was airing another ghost attack. Lance Thunder looked just as uncomfortable as ever.

“Well Amanda, the creep crate is attempting to rob the antique store once again. The Fentons are trying to subdue him. There is still no sign of Phantom.”

Behind the reporter, the Box Ghost was running as fast as he could. A box full of old clocks floated behind him while Jack Fenton chased him with a Fenton bazooka. Every time he shot at the blue ghost, he missed. It was laughable. Danny leaves them the weakest ghost and they still couldn't catch it!

Danny...

It wasn't fair! How come Danny managed to get the cool powers and keep his humanity? Danny got to be the world-famous hero, but Tucker would have to spend each and every day trying not to murder anyone. Why couldn't Sam had been bitten by her creepy friend instead of him? At least the style would have suited her! Why did Tucker always get the short end of the stick? Was this punishment for some awful crime he couldn't remember?

Tucker felt the bitterness creeping through his soul. That wasn't good! He needed to focus on something else before his powers went out of control. Who knew what horrible ability would make itself known? Besides, Jazz always told Danny that good things come to those with a positive attitude.

He changed the channel. A cartoon about a giant mouse and a cat was playing. They were going on some sort of adventure. It was the type of show his grandma used to put on when he was little. It was stupid and mindless, the perfect escape from his panicked mind.

He kicked his shoes off, leaving them to unceremoniously fall onto the floor. He thought about switching into his pyjamas, but what would be the point? He probably wasn't going to get much sleep at night anymore. His body needed to get used to his new needs.

Suddenly, there was a loud banging on the door. Tucker jolted upright, fear coursing through his body. Was it the police? How did they manage to find him?

“Room service!” The voice sounded like the high pitch Danny used to imitate Jazz.

“It's three in the morning lady!” Tucker yelled back, “Go away!”

The person who was most likely Danny, could not be deterred. Instead, the banging became louder and more frequent.

“Go away, Danny!” Tucker yelled. It was still dark out. He still may have those urges. The thought of accidentally killing his best friend only added to the rising panic attack.

And annoyed Danny Phantom phased through the wooden door. In his left hand was two paper bags with the Nasty Burger logo on them. In his right hand, he was balancing a tray of drinks.

“Really Tucker?” Danny rolled his eyes. The ghost boy summoned his transformation rings, “Why did you ru-“

“Stay in your ghost form!” Tucker yelled. The runaway wondered if he had woken up anyone. He hoped they would take him as a normal dude and not come down to investigate.

“Okay.” Danny placed the tray on the side table. He threw one of the greasy bags at Tucker before sitting down on the bed.

The runaway peeked inside the bag. Danny had bought him three burgers and filled the remaining bag full of fries. There was enough food to last him a day or two if he was careful. At Tucker's surprise, Danny smiled.

“Valerie was closing. When I told her I was ordering for you, she filled the bag. I think she may have developed a crush on you Tucker.”

Pain seared Tucker's heart. Why did he have to go on that stupid date?

Danny gracefully sat down on Tucker's bed. The two ate in silence, pretending to watch the inconsequential adventures of the cartoon rat and cat.

Inside his mind, Tucker was falling apart. He knew his best friend would try to convince him to go home, but Tucker could never go back again. Danny would try to find the positives, perhaps even suggest Tucker become his own superhero. Yet the ghost boy didn't understand the intense longing Tucker had every time he looked at a human.

Danny seemed to be deep in thought as well. He was frowning, and every so often he would narrow his eyes or cringe. It was like he was having a war within. Finally, Danny decided to speak.

“As much as I am enjoying watching whatever this is... We need to talk.”

We need to talk...

It sounded like something Sam would say. Her influence was rubbing off of Danny too much. Briefly, Tucker wondered if Danny would be embarrassed if he mentioned it.

“Why did you run away? Did one of the ghosts threaten you?”

“NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT GHOSTS!” Tucker shouted, “SOMETIMES YOU REALLY ARE A FENTON!”

His best friend took a deep breath. Tucker could almost hear Danny counting down from 10.

“Tucker,” Phantom said, barely keeping the hurt out of his voice, “What happened?”

Unearthly green eyes met emerald. Neither of them found themselves backing down. Minutes past before Danny finally seemed to yield. Tucker should have known better. Danny always had been the most determined of the trio.

“If you don't tell me, I'll just bring you back home,” The ghost boy stood up and crossed his arms. Tucker knew he would stick to the threat.

“I am a vampire.” Tucker was careful to keep emotion out of his voice. Admitting his problem had a calming effect. It was like accepting a punishment one didn't deserve. With the calm came a feeling of hopelessness.

“So, Sam was right…” Danny's stubbornness deflated. Now he looked lost and unsure. It was bizarre to see such emotions on the usually cocky ghost boys face.

“My life is over. No cheerleaders, no movie theatres, no graduation, and no future career in technology. Now, do you see why I can't go home?” Tucker brought his knees to his chest. Part of him wanted to feel something. He just felt so... Empty.

“We'll think of something. Maybe there's a way we can refocus those powers or-”

“No Danny, Tucker interrupted, “I'm not half-vampire! I bear  the full curse! If you were in human form, I would have killed you! I barely stopped myself from killing the clerk. I’m a monster…”

“We will figure something out.”  Danny had always been the optimist, almost to a fault. Tucker knew it was only a matter of time before the vampire overtook the human. Then Phantom would have to subdue him.

“You can't be the only vampire... Maybe Vlad can help! He kind of looks like one...” Danny had started to pace back and forth.

“Or Vlad will use me as a weapon against you?” Tucker suggested.

Danny paused and gave an unimpressed glare. Then he noticed the clock on the wall.

“I have to go. I'm sorry”

“Patrol?” Tucker felt anguish streak through his heart. He needed his best friend! Couldn’t Danny miss one stupid patrol? Memories of a grieving and guilty Phantom flickered in the back of his mind. Tucker was being selfish again. Bad things always happened when Danny missed his nightly rounds. There was a reason Amity Park was one of the safest places on earth.

“Trust me, Tuck. Sam and I will think of something. Remember to shut your blinds. (Sam said sunlight hurts you.) Sam has a book that you might find useful.  See you tomorrow night!”

Within the next minute, Danny was gone. The vampire chuckled to himself as he cleaned the wrappers. If Danny thought he was going to stay put... Then he was way too trusting. Tucker would switch apartments for the rest of the night. Once the sunset, he would travel further away.

He couldn't burden his best friend with his mistakes. Danny already had the whole world on his shoulders with the ghosts. He didn't need any more difficulties. The hero couldn’t constantly watch him. If Tucker did massively screw up, which he undoubtedly would, the ghost boy would forever blame himself. The best thing to do would be for Tucker to leave.

After throwing away his and Danny’s wrappers, the teen grabbed his bag. He pulled out his cell phone and PDA. Tucker knew he should have left them at home, but he couldn't bear the part with his babies.

Here, Tucker needed to become a man. No one was going to solve his problems for him. Danny or the police will track him down (he cursed his stupidity for not getting rid of the find friends app). He turned the TV off and left.

He had to do this on his own. He would find a cure or learn to control his urges. He would go back to Amity Park. He would hug his parents, apologize to Danny and ask Valerie on a date. He would scream at Sam for setting him up with a vampire, and the two would be friends again. The trio would hunt ghosts like they used to. Everything would go back to normal.

He couldn’t lose hope.