Concept: inspired by @bluerosefox and they're work about danny demanding the jokers soul. I wanted to write the joker and Danny's interactions too.
Danny groaned as the next set of paperwork was slipped onto his desk.
Joker would soon croak.
He would slip on his own banana peel and fall down the stairs.
Gothem would celebrate that night with alcohol and music. The ghost zone would brace itself for the trial...
Honestly it was bound to happen. It wasn't that danny was surprised. But it would be a long drawn out case. When a human dies they become more of what they are after all.
It's like their souls are condensed to make up their ghostly form. As if their passions were their hearts.
For some that was amazing. Fiery passion can be useful in all sorts of situations, but for joker this would be a nightmare come true.
The ghost looked at him his eyes worried, almost teary.
"Should I alarm the Gothamites of the infinite realms."
Danny thought for a minute, let out a low hum, and thought some more.
He knew what he could do in theory.
If he was to judge the jokers soul in the room that he dies in, the ghost zone would be free from his wrath.
But if the joker defeated him in combat he shuddered at what that monster would do with all the power in the afterlife.
He didn't really think joker could take him down, but knowing others thought the same for him and his predecessor....
So Danny was left with one option.
"Call my knights," he commanded
The fright knight was captain. Head of the army and keeper of the soul shredder.
Danny only needed to borrow it, but when he explained the predicament the ghost dropped to his knees, the metal clang sound echoed through the office. The fright knight began to speak,
"You wish to spare me from looking into the eyes of evil, and I thank you my liege. But I can not and shall not send you alone to your second death."
Danny told him to rise to get off the dirty floor, but he continued.
"As captain of the guards my liege is only under my obligation to the knights under me."
Danny remembered the conversation that made that a possibility. That changed the priority of obligation completely and totally, hopefully for once and for all.
Danny hid a small smile and told him to get of the floor again
............
It didn't take long to find joker amoung the living. He was surrounded by weeping souls unable to move on.
Danny clutched his scale. A gift from clockwork, to a "good and fair king to continue to strive to be better."
Clockwork had, in the end taken up the role of advisor. As such he stood by Danny's right side, his captain to the left.
When they entered the room he was already dead.
The soul of the man was laughing hysterically.
He got louder when he spotted them.
Danny sighed and despite the noise tried to read him his rights.
He argued with each and every one in nonsensical logic.
The third time Danny slapped him across his ghostly face, leaving frostbite and cold crystals on his white cheek.
"I am not batman, I am death. I will not play as he does, I am the ghost king, death himself."
After the rights were read Danny peared into his soul, sticky and tar like, it made him feel ill. He put on the extra gauntlet brought and separated the dead from his deeds.
It felt like lifting a semi, and weighed him down about a foot.
The joker cackled with pride. Danny wondered if he didn't understand the gravity of the situation, or if he didn't care.
Then with the other hand he did the same to himself.
Both sets of deeds were set on the scale at the same time. Danny barely caught the peice of his own ghostly form.
The scale broke the table on its way down, jokers sludgelike, corrupted deeds stuck to it. The scale hadn't twitched once to the other side.
The knights went to pick up the piece of soul and put it back. It took three of them.
Danny put his deeds back were they belonged.
When everything was dead and done, joker was declared guilty and chained down, something he escaped out the window and around the block to avoid.
Danny took out the soul shredder.
It wasn't the fright knights job to play executioner.
Then the joker was blindfolded, he made this difficult via attempted biting, but once it was done, it was done.
Danny didn't ask for a last word.
He took the sword and swung as he had been taught. And as the jokers very soul was torn, the bells rang in Gotham for the first time in Years.
He didn't miss.
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"Nocturne is one of the Ancients who sealed away Pariah Dark, but he doesn’t remember who the others were. His memories didn’t fade with time; they were taken. How did this happen and why?" - Prompt from Hollyflash for the Phic Phight. Updated 2021 The future Ghost King Danny Phantom is hiding from his duties in Ghostwriter's library when they discover a trail of memories that reveal a dark secret from the past.
Chapter 1: All Hail the new King
You can also read this on A03, FF.net, and Wattpad.
If another person called him “Your Highness” Danny was going to flip the fuck out. Your Highness this, Your Highness that, Your Highness take this! It was going to drive him up the wall and into the goddamn moon. The worst of all was the Knight of darkness, ruler of Halloween, and former loyal Pariah apologist, Fright Knight.
Everywhere he went, Fright Knight was there! In his homeroom, in his locker, even in his bathroom, handing him toilet paper. There were only a few times Danny was thankful that everyone knew his identity, he couldn’t even think of a way to lie to his parents about why he was screaming at an undead knight to get out of his bathroom at five in the morning, or why said Knight had cleaned his bedroom, and laid out his freshly ironed clothes for the day.
And now Danny, Tucker, and Sam were hiding in the one place the Lord of the Night would never look for them. The Ghostwriter’s library. A dusty building full of deep violet book shelves that spans far past what the exterior of the building would suggest. The years of dust and ectoplasm was leaking from the books and onto their clothes. Staining their boots as they pushed piles of tomes back on to the failing bookshelves.
“Be careful! Those are ectoplasmic memories from the library of Alexander! If you press them too hard they will completely fade away!” Ghostwriter cried, pushing books into new makeshift piles.
“An ectoplasmic what?” asked Danny.
“Did you say those are from the library of Alexander?!” Tucker and Sam reached for the fading books.
“They are not from the library of Alexander, they are memories of the library of alexander. Just like humans and animals, items and even places with deep pain can manifest as ectoplasmic memories or after images. But unless the pain is cumbersome, the items or places only exist as a faded version of themselves. And LET GO!” he said, pulling the scroll from Sam’s hands, before gently blowing the dust off the scroll’s translucent body.
“That’s amazing! Do you know how much lost information is in that?” Tucker said.
“ Do I know how much ? OF COURSE I KNOW! That is why I asked you to not touch it!” Ghostwriter said, shoving the scroll deep into his jacket.
“Why do you even have that? How did you even get it?” Sam asked.
“The Ghost Zone is a reflection of the human world. So when a person dies a most tragic and hopeless death, the reflection of their suffering gains a new miserable life in this neon green hellscape. The same thing happens to objects and even places. Once in a while the ghost zone may become a reflection of itself, though I’ve personally never seen it.”
“What do you mean a reflection of itself? Can’t it go both ways?”
“Can you reflect a mirror?”
“What?”
“Can you reflect a mirror?” Ghostwriter repeated the question but the three teenagers looked at him with blank faces. “If you stand in front of a mirror it will give you your reflection, but does it work the opposite way? Can you, a human, give a mirror its reflection?”
“No people aren’t mirrors. Our skin is pretty solid.” Tucker said.
“Exactly. Humans and the human world cannot give any reflections, therefore when tragedy and misery strikes in the Ghost Zone, it is like a mirror is held up to another mirror. The two reflections repeat the image over and over again until it runs out of energy. At least according to the theories I read. Most of these events don’t last more than a hundred years before they fade out.”
“Wait, you said in theory, does that mean no one has seen one before?” Sam asked.
“That just means no one who has seen it has written them down. There are stories of ghosts seeing them, and even a stupid legend about one in the library. But I’ve never seen it.” The last part came out of his mouth like a teenager complaining about their ten o’clock curfew. “But you three are more than welcome to go exploring and find this double reflection. And leave me and my work alone.”
“What was that last part?” Tucker said.
“You three are free to go exploring around the library to your little heart's content.”
“No what you said after that.”
“Nothing. I didn’t say anything. But make sure no damage comes to my library. You might be the future king but I will not hesitate to call that dimwitted knight oliver to collect you.” Danny rolled his eyes at the treat.
“Yeah, yeah we will make sure not to burn the place down.” Danny said.
As the three began to make their way down the library bookshelves, Ghostwriter disappeared into a nearby room and slammed the door shut. The twisting of the lock echoed through the quiet building.
“Man that guy is rude.” Tucker was the first to break the silence. “Especially to the future King of the ghost zone.”
“I know, tell me about it.” Danny said. “He should be treating the new king with a little bit more respect!”
“Well, technically you’re not King yet. You're just a prince right now. You’re not even 18 yet.'' Sam said.
“Yeah but Danny is almost King, and that should count for something.” Tucker said.
“You would think but half of the Ghost Zone still treats me like I’m a kid. I’m sixteen for Christ sake!”
‘Maybe they don’t believe you are the next king. Or maybe they don’t want a king?” Sam pondered.
“Well if I was going to be the next king, Danny and Sam gave their friend wary looks. The school still remembered the short reign of King Tuck. “I would show them whose boss! No king can let his subjects walk all over him, that's why you have to know them down sometimes.”
“Um Tucker? If Danny does that he would be just as bad as Pariah Dark.”
“No Sam, I’m not saying Danny should torture or try to kill the ghost. Just ruff them up a little. Send the guards to their house, throw them in prison. People have to fear their rulers a little bit,”
“I can’t believe you! People shouldn't have to fear their rulers! Actually if you ask me,” Nobody had. “There shouldn’t be any rulers at all! The existence of a ruler means there has to be someone below them and no human or ghost is lower than any other human or ghost! Plus the Ghost zone hasn’t even had a king for the last 300 or something years? And everything looks okay.”
“Oh okay so you think anarchy is the best way to go? To let weaker ghost get stomp down on by the strong? Let crazy people like Walker stomp around the place setting up their own barbaric laws?” Tucker began to raise his voice.
“Not again,” Danny groaned.
“No, I am against what Walker does, and anarchy isn’t the solution either! The ghost should come together and form a collective! That way they can decide the rules for themselves amongst themselves. That way nobody is left behind or is forgotten about.”
“Sam,” Tucker said.
“Yes?”
“That is communism”
“Exactly! Communism is the only ethical system of government! Down with the old class systems and usher in a new age of equality between the workers! I mean ghosts!”
“Yes, yes we get it Sam you read Carl Marx once,” Danny sighed.
“No Danny, think about it! Think! This is the perfect moment to establish a communist system in the ghost world! You can establish it using the power granted to you, then you can distribute it among the other ghosts, bringing them up to equal standing with the king! But there will no longer be a king, just another comrade! Plus you can get rid of Walker’s unfair prison system and free all the innocent ghosts who just wanted to see the human world again!” Sam ranted.
“That … sounds almost perfect Sam, but let me ask you this? What happens if another ghost like Pariah Dark comes around and tries to take over?” Danny asked.
“If all the ghosts in the ghost world have banded together to bring peace and order, they can also band together to take down any threat that comes along the way! One ghost cannot defeat a hundred ghosts.”
“One issue Sam,” Tucker smirked. “The first time Pariah Dark rose to power no one could stop him, and it took a bunch of the most powerful ghost in existence to band together and put him in a coffin,”
“A sarcophagus.” Sam said.
“What?”
“He was sealed in a sarcophagus, not a coffin.”
“Sarcophagus, coffin, whatever. He was sealed away in a fancy death box by some of the most powerful ghosts to ever exist and then Danny came in a mech suit and did it again!”
“If Danny can do it in a mech suit (no offense Danny,) then a hundred ghosts in a hundred mech suits can do ten times as fast!”
Danny ran his hands through his hair. This argument had been on repeat, going on and on, till Danny put a stop to it. It started with Fright Knight ramming his horse into the side of Sam’s house to announce Danny would be the next ghost king, and talks about communist revolution and whatever Tucker was saying; had become an almost daily ritual. If Vlad suddenly appeared and began to smash Danny’s head against the wall that would ALMOST be better than hearing this.
In the center of Danny back became hot and stingy, like there was a pair of lasers that had drilled themselves towards his core. Giving in, Danny slowly turned his head to see Ghostwriter peeking out from the end of the hallway. His eyes had turned a violent hue of blood red. His lips mouthing the words, “ You are too loud” . He exaggerated his lips to display a set of secondary fangs, hiding under his green gum line. Danny spun his body around like a top. Placing hands on his friend's back he gave a quick, “Hey let's do this somewhere else!” Before dragging his friends further into the deep hues of the library. The trio passed by bookshelves and glowing cobwebs of all shape and size until Danny was satisfied with the distance.
“Yo, where are we?” Tucker asked.
Around them the books had turned into leather covered tomes. The florescent lights above had shrunk and slimmed into metal hands holding lit blue candles that lined the wall. Around the flames hung painted portraits of those long forgotten; a woman with red boiling flame hair, a man with crystal hair and a ticking eye, and a boy with clothes as deep as the night sky stars above them, into a painted green ceiling. The green painted swirls warped around each other as the old labels hung around the castles painted upon green clouds. “The Dark Kingdom” and “The Kingdom of Dragons” were the first places that caught his eye. Sam touched one of the books, only for layers upon layers of multi-colored dust to blow into her face.
“Fuck! How old is this place? And when was the last time they cleaned? The ice age!?” Her words were punctuated by coughs.
“I don’t know,” Danny said, his eyes trailing along the shelves. Some of these books weren’t in English, nor did they look like any modern language. He ran his finger down one of the spines and tried to pronounce the ghost speak written on its surface, but it came out like malformed garbles. It didn’t make any sense to him, a horse on the sun? No, maybe it said horse with sun legs? That didn’t make sense either but his tongue was getting tongue tied trying to figure out what it said.
“Where did Ghostwriter even find this stuff?” Sam shoved the book back into its spot, the dust had now turned her black clothes green and blue.
“I don’t think he did,” Tucker said. “Look at the ceiling, see how it says Land of Ice? If you compare it to our map it is only a few miles from the Far Frozen?”
“And what does that mean?” Danny said.
“Well if you look at how old everything is and compare the two maps, the only thing it can be is a map of the ghost zone!”
“But that can’t be because there is only one map of the ghost zone, and that is the infinity map.” Sam said.
“The infinity map changes to reflect the ghost zone, but look this one isn’t moving at all. It looks like someone tried to make a normal map of the Ghost Zone.”
“That means Kingdom of Dark is-” Danny started.
“That has to be Pariah’s old kingdom!” Tucker finished. “Wow! That must have been huge! Compare it to our map. It would've covered almost everything we know. Look! It covers Walker’s prison, Skulker’s Swamp, this Library, and even the Far Frozen!” Tucker held his map above him, his eyes switching between the two.
“The Far Frozen? Does that mean he used to rule over it?” Sam said.
“Yeah, whenever this was painted, Pariah Dark must have ruled over the Far Frozen. That probably explains why they don’t like him too much.” Danny said.
“Well even if he didn’t rule over them, I don’t think they would’ve liked him anyways. It doesn't seem like the old king had many friends.” Sam said.
“My Dad once said that the loneliest place is at the top,” Tucker said.
“Your Dad also says that nothing is better than bacon. Not even sex,” Sam said.
“He’s not wrong!” Tucker laughed.
Danny was silent, he looked above to the map with his lips pressed together in a grimace. He imagined himself on the throne in Pariah’s keep, the crown and armor hung loosely around his body, its clangs and clanks resounding around the empty room. He was there alone. He floated to the ceiling and examined the map in greater detail. His friends called out for him but he waved them off.
His hands grazed the old paint as names of places that no longer existed silently let him pass them by. The map was larger than it looked on the ground. Every nameplate was twice the size of his torso and painted in gold. It was an impressive piece of art, or propaganda. His hand ran over something cold, but not ice cold. It was more of a hollow cold, as if the warmth had been sucked out of it by a machine. Grasping the object he yanked it out of the ceiling, leaving a small hole next to the “Nightmare estate” plate. The object was a glass ball filled with black inky goo with white sparkling dots. Around the center of the ball was a gold band lined with rubies, engraved on the gold was a phrase similar to the old ghost speak he saw before. Mouthing out the mouths he read “left of the eye of star” he considered it more gibberish.
“Hey guys,” He called out. “Look at this!” Floating down the ball slipped from his hands and crashed on the old wooden floor. “Fuck!”
“Jesus Danny, are you trying to kill us?” Tucker jested.
“No I was just-”
“Hey guys!” Sam yelled. She pointed to the broken ball, the ink was rising. Its black body rose in the air like a bubbling volcano spurting ink everywhere before exploding and surrounding the three in darkness.
The white sparkling dots began to glow brighter and brighter, till they were bleeding. Then they began to spin around them. The white light formed new solid bookshelves and wooden floors. Ghost flew around them pulling paint buckets to and from the center. They all looked like they had come from a renaissance fair with their loose and colorful clothing, splattered with water and paint. The sounds of construction rose in volume until the scene was complete, it was the library, but the cobwebs were nowhere in sight.
“Woah! What happened?”
“Danny what’s going on?”
“I don’t know, hey watch-” A ghost flew through him, not phased but flew through, as if he was air. “This is weird.”
“It’s like we're not even here,” Sam said, running her fingers through a pile of paint buckets.
“Maybe it's the other way around. Look everyone is all blurry and faded at the edges.” Tucker was right, each ghost and object around them was blurry at the seams. It was like everything had jumped out of an out of focus picture.
“Danny! Behind you!” Sam yelled. Behind him was a tall pale figure with curled purple ram horn on top of his head, and a coat made out of the night sky itself hung around his exaggerated arms, pooling like ink around his feet. “It’s Nocturne!” Instant took its chance and Danny shot several bright green blasts at Nocturne. But, like the figures around him they passed through him. Nocturne strolled past them with a sly smile painted on his face. His height put him at least three heads above everyone in the room. The sounds of work grew in volume as Nocturne passed the other blurry figures, their faces pointed towards the ground and away from the dark tower wandering about.
“What is he doing here?” Tucker asked.
“I don’t know.” Danny replied. They watched as this new blurry Nocturne made his way up a nearby stairwell and into a side room. “But he can’t be up to any good. Let’s follow him
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