#like 'I feel bad lying about my identity even though coming out would be dangerous'

[servantleverslutdrop]

Always so alien to me that people feel an inherent shame in stealing or lying, divorced from any actual harm the action may or may not be causing

[modanisgf]

9. GHOST IN THE MACHINE

y/n felt trapped, trapped in a sense that she didn’t feel real. on late nights like this, she would lay in her bed staring up at the ceiling contemplating her life.

the girl had picked up a comic book hiding away in closet the day after she got bit. it was about spider-man obviously, and reading through the collection of them she had she came to a realization.

if she was technically spider-man, does that mean that the fate of every other spider-man would come to her too? what if her loved ones were now in danger?

this was what made y/n so hesitant to let danielle into her life. after their hangout that night y/n kept her distance aside from when they were working towards the collab. she couldn’t hurt the girl like that, y/n didn’t know what she would do with herself if dani got hurt because of her.

what she was oblivious to though, was that regardless she was hurting danielle.

just not in the way she thought.

y/n felt rather nervous as she unlocked the door to the lesserafim dorms. she had just gotten back from a patrol, lying to her members that she went shopping. except yunjin of course, who was busy being your right hand man.

recently y/n had gotten more into the persona of spider-woman which is what alarmed zuha even more when danielle texted her. kazuha barely saw her friend anymore, she needed answers.

y/n finally walked into the room, her heart dropping when she saw all of her members sitting on the couch. chaewon who looked extremely angry, sakura and kazuha who were more concerned, yunjin who looked hella nervous and eunchae who had no clue why she was there.

‘was it really necessary for zuha to get the entire group here..’ y/n thought placing her bag down at the door.

she took a seat on the floor ready to be lectured, but instead was asked a question.

“y/n are you really spider-woman?” chaewon asks, her face softening.

“huh?!” y/n says. all of a sudden it was clear why yunjin seemed so scared.

y/n looked at the only member that knew her identity, she was giving her a look of sympathy.

y/n just sighed, “fine, i am.” she said finally making all of her members let out a sigh of relief.

“god i thought you were ignoring us..” sakura says hitting her younger member on the arm.

“sorry..” y/n says.

“i’m just afraid.”

“of what?” eunchae asks.

“of something happening to you all. like what happens in the comics.” y/n admits, her eyes looking anywhere but her members.

“y/n it’s not your fault if we get endangered i promise. nothing bad will happen, okay? i just want my friend back.” chaewon says hugging y/n lightly, letting the girl ease into the touch.

“thank you guys for always being there for me.” y/n says, her members hearts melting.

“we love you y/n.”

“so much.” eunchae emphasizes making y/n smile.

“i love you guys too.” she says.

“also y/n you better start talking to danielle again.” kazhuha warns, y/n nodding.

“i will.”

series masterlist || next

taglist (open): @haerinsloverr @kaypanaq @idkwhatim-doinghere101 @pandafuriosa60 @thefckghost

note— y’all i didn’t realize i would get sm free time this weekend so heres an update 😭😭

[lambstoth3slaughter]

NOT AN OPEN RP

CW: sad stuff and mild self harm

The years weren't kind to the grave, Sinclair noticed. Guess that was what happened when you pushed away everyone close to you and had no one to come see you. Not even Sinclair stepped foot in the cemetery after the funeral. They didn't think they'd ever be allowed. Like the ghost of their father would come back and have their head for thinking they'd be allowed to see his final resting place.

They passed the threshold with no issues, though. No ghosts grabbed at their throat, no whispers of "monster" in their ears. They were fine.

The grave was next to their mother - to Amy's grave. It didn't feel right calling her mom still. Sinclair sniffled some, gently wiping a tear from their eye.

"Hey, Dad," they said, their voice breaking slightly. "Sorry it took so long to come see you. I... I didn't think I'd ever come around. Didn't think you'd want me." They took in a shaky breath, wiping their eye again. "A lot has happened since- since that night. You know I don't believe in heaven or hell or anything, but I really hope you've seen the things I've done. Not just the bad things..." they looked at Amy's grave, "you, too..."

There was so much to say. So little time. "I know about Paige. Paige and- and Eric. You hardly waited at all, huh? The moment I was able to take care of myself... that was where you spent all your time. When I thought you were at the bar or something, you were really out with your son, one you never told me about." They had papers in their hand, files, things that some friends in low places were able to get for them. "I was six when he was born. You waited until I could just barely take care of myself and moved on with a family you had to have loved. Did they know? Did they know about me? Did they see the man you were to me or..." A broken sob escaped them, "or did they get to see the man Amy fell in love with? The dad that I never got to have."

They broke. They covered their face and sobbed into their hands, the files falling to the ground. "Why didn't you just let me die? Why didn't you just love me?!"

The sobs drowned out any other noises around them. Including footsteps that stopped mere meters away. "Oh, am I interrupting?"

Sinclair jumped out of their skin and turned, hand on their knife. Though they settled the moment they realized they weren't in danger. "Shit, kid," they said, sniffling, "good way to get fucking stabbed!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, miss, I didn't mean to scare you," he said quickly, moving up to the grave and picking up the files Sinclair dropped, handing them back. "You spooked me, too. Not used to seeing people at my dad's grave."

Sinclair took the files quickly. Dad..? Shit. Eric Foster. Why did he look... familiar?

"Oh, uh... I'm here for Amy, actually. She was like an aunt to me! My mom and her were pretty much inseparable, so I spent plenty of time with- hey, don't call me miss. I'm, uh. I'm Sinclair. Sinclair F-" not Foster not Foster, "Edda. Sinclair Edda. At your service." They cleared their throat. "They/them pronouns."

Eric seemed baffled. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I'm Eric Foster! Uh, he/him/his. Uh, AMAB, and still align with it and all that." He rubbed the back of his neck, scrambling to put some flowers down in Rich's grave and extending his hand.

Sinclair should walk away now while they still had some of their composure back to them. They should go while their identity was still safe.

They took his hand and shook. "Nice to meet you, Eric," they said, unsure if they really meant that. They let go and cleared their throat again. Fucking allergies, that was what they'd blame. "So, Rich had a son. I didn't know that."

Eric laughed, though it was awkward and forced. He was as uncomfortable as Sinclair. "Yeah, it was after Amy passed. He told me about her. She seemed like a nice woman. You look incredibly young for having known her. Didn't she pass in '97?"

One good thing about being a criminal was being quick on your feet and lying to their half-brother was no different than lying to the police. "Oh, that's what a good skin care routine will do. That, and bathing in the blood of the innocent and selling your soul."

He laughed. It was a genuine one. The ice was officially broken. Sinclair relaxed. "So... just you? No siblings or anything?" They needed to know how much he knew. Did Richard even mention them once?

The answer shattered them completely.

"Nope, just me. Dad was always too busy to even entertain the thought of another kid. Said I'm all he needed and more!" Eric said with a gentle smile, a soft look in his eyes as he looked at the grave.

Sinclair was going to be sick.

"Yeah... that makes sense," they whispered, sniffling.

"Huh? What, it's that obvious?" Eric asked with another easy-going laugh. "Do I got a smell on me or something?"

This time, the forced laugh came from Sinclair. "Not exactly. It's more of a... look. You don't look like you've ever had to fight for the shower first or have your door opened for no reason at all, and it not be closed again." Of course, the closest thing Sinclair had to that was Amelie, Edward, Tal, and any other strays they managed to pick up over the years.

Eric was laughing, though. Laughing a lot. It was a nice sound. Sinclair blinked back more tears.

"Well, good to know you've got siblings," he said, looking back at their.. his father's grave. His father. Sinclair didn't have a father and they didn't want to claim the one Eric had. He didn't need to know what a monster the man was.

"Only one," Sinclair said simply, "a brother. Estranged, but.." they cleared their throat. "I should get going. It was nice meeting you. Maybe we'll see each other again!" They gave a smile, not waiting for a response before they started walking away. They were quick and silent, waiting until they were certain they were out of earshot before they collapsed and sobbed again. Shit.. shit! "Richard, you fucking bastard," they said, biting down on their hand. Hard. Hard enough to draw blood. Only then did they settle again enough to stand up. They were filled with so much rage. They hated their father, but they didn't shatter the perfect image of him for Eric. No, he didn't deserve that.

With a deep breath, Sinclair pulled the picture out of the file of their brother as they walked out of the cemetery. They rubbed their eyes. "One brother," they said softly, smiling a bit.

It didn't last long.

Sinclair's eyes widened suddenly. He looked familiar. Too familiar. Too fucking familiar.

"Crazy bitch," they said to themself. "Crazy bitch! Fuck!" They shoved the files in their bag and rushed towards the tube station.

Their dream.

That fucking dream.

Eric Foster was going to be the one who caused the death of Sinclair Foster.

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

I saw your reblog And took that personally more COURIER SIX PL E ASE

What's his favorite thing, does he loot the random things

Most importantly; did he get the winning lottery ticket

Mirek my beloved

I haven't got much for his pre-game backstory, but he probably hasn't been Courier for super long, but he's very dedicated to the job. After shit starts getting real, his identity as a Courier becomes sort of an anchor to cling to for at least some tiny sense of normalcy.

He is not having a good time out there.

The gunshot to his head took his left eye and caused a fracture to the supraorbital bone and the bullet got stuck somewhere in the back of the brain. It missed the most important brain parts only by sheer luck. Weeks after recovery he still has quite some struggle with memory (both remembering pre-injury events and forming new memories, the pip-boy comes really handy as a notepad) and the lack of depth perception and issues with fine motor function in his fingers makes him a less than decent shooter. But he's managing.

The near-death experience also left him deeply shaken and a lot more sensitive about death than he remembers being before. Seeing his own grave empty like it's waiting for him was less than comforting.

In general, he tries to avoid violence as much as possible. Back in the before times as a courier he was quite good at sneaking past potentially dangerous people without being noticed. This is now harder since he stumbles more and can't keep as quiet as before. When he has to fight, he tries to go only as far as injuring and forcing the enemy to disengage. He would rather run than engage in a fight even if he could win. The only people he's killed were powder gangers that absolutely would not have let him live.

Since recently, he makes an exception though. Seeing what the Legion has done in Nipton, he still does not seek out violence but he feels absolutely zero guilt if a legion soldier dies by his hand. After all that Vulpes Inculta said, after seeing the still living people on the crosses, the burnt and beheaded corpses, the bodies in the town hall that he spent so much time lining up to give them at least the bare minimum respect in death instead of lying scattered in piles, something broke in him. He promised himself he would pull that dog hoodie off of that man's corpse himself if he gets the chance.

Overall, he tries his best to be polite and has trouble saying no to requests for help. For some reason he has a strong liking to robots, unlike most people who seem to distrust them, he feels an odd comfort when meeting one. Possibly for the fact that robots are simpler to understand and deal with, since one can typically know what to expect.

He vibes with the music played on Radio New Vegas, but when things get very, very bad (like when he walked out of the ruins of Nipton completely broken), his go-to comfort is to switch to Mojave Music Radio. Usually the music lets him keep The Horrors at bay long enough to reach the nearest place with alcohol.

As for clothes he generally just wears whatever is the most practical, and is constantly on the lookout for some good headwear that would somewhat cover his missing eye. Thinks he looks good in pre-war clothes.

His ancestors came to America in the 2050s during the European-Middle Eastern War. He does not speak their language and knows pretty much nothing about where his family came from. All he has left from that is his name suggested by his grandparents, and the melody of a lullaby, the lyrics of which have been lost to time generations ago, but Mirek could remember that melody even if Benny's bullet took every other memory he has.

Considering making this his theme song

[scrawlingwithstyle]

One Good Turn (5/?)

The story of how “you,” an apparently average person, join the Avengers. 

A Marvel fanfiction based on my friend’s recurring dream. 

Warnings: None

Word Count: 1434

Tags: @arrow-guy, @ifitistobeitisuptous

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

You can barely sleep that night, but you know you need to in order to refresh your brain for the morning. Stark had said twenty-two hours. That gives you till five p.m.

The morning takes too long to come, so you’re up before the sun, mulling over your options while you eat breakfast. You have a list in your mind of what powers would pair best with the combat skills you’re learning from Nat and the healing factor you already know you want. You just have to shuffle through them to find one that best suits you.

Shapeshifting comes off the list pretty early when you realize that changing your size or shape might counteract all your training. Longer or shorter limbs would make you clumsy. An animal form would be even worse.

Flight also crosses your mind. It’s practical in some ways. You consider the advantage to dodging, and then an even better thought comes to mind: heightened reflexes.

Having powers that aren’t apparent at first would be good for hiding in plain sight or keeping a secret identity. On top of that, a danger sense of some kind would make it easier to make split-second decisions.

It’s barely six a.m. when you realize you’ve decided on your second power. To make sure you’re certain, you let yourself think about it for a bit longer while you finish getting ready for the day. And besides, you don’t know what time it’s okay to call.

It’s five to seven when you can’t stand it anymore and call the number for Avengers Tower.

“Morning,” greets Stark. He sounds like he’s been up for a while. Maybe he hasn’t even been to bed at all.

“I’ve decided,” you say.

“Perfect. How soon can you be here?”

You look at the clock. “I don’t have work today, so… twenty minutes?”

“Alright. I’ll let Banner know to expect you at the lab.” He hangs up without a goodbye.

You frown a little but don’t take it personally. In the brief time you’ve known him, he appears to be a bit brusque with everyone.

As promised, you arrive at the tower within twenty minutes. You pass by very few people on your way up, including Natasha. When you make it to the lab, Bruce is the only one there.

He greets you from the far end of the room and then asks, “What other ability have you decided on?”

“You know how Spiderman just kind of… knows when something bad is about to happen?” you say, unable to hold back a grin. “Something like that. An extra sense for danger.”

He furrows his brow and nods. “I think I understand. Unfortunately, it’ll take some time to program the device given your specifications. Probably at least a couple of hours, give or take.” He looks you up and down. “If you want to spend some time in the gym, or up in Clint’s archery range, that might be a good way to let off some energy.”

“Oh,” you say, somewhat disappointed. He’s not wrong, though. You’re feeling pretty amped up. “That sounds like a good idea.”

You haven’t been to the archery range yet, and you doubt Clint is here this early to show you around, so you head back down to the gym and find a treadmill. You figure if a brisk jog doesn’t help, there’s always a punching bag you can beat up.

Steve shows up about thirty minutes in while you’re taking a break and just lying on one of the mats. He reaches out a hand, and despite your desire to stay on the floor, you grab it and let him pull you up. “Are you okay?” he asks.

You smile. “Yeah, just nervous. And excited.” You pause at a thought. “How did it go when you got your . . . ?” you gesture to all of him.

He chuckles. “It hurt like hell, and I wanted to sleep for a week straight.”

Your face pales. “Oh, is that all?” you ask weakly.

He claps a hand on your shoulder, laughing. “You’ll be fine. It’s a different process, and it shouldn’t make any drastic physical changes if you didn’t ask for them.”

Relief washes over you. “Thank God.”

You spend some time watching him, fascinated, as he lifts weights labeled in the triple digits. “What are those things made of?” you ask after a minute.

He finishes a set and sets them down before answering that it’s adamantium.

You gape at him for a minute before you find your voice again. “I know Tony has money to burn, but that is a lot of money to burn.”

Steve nods. “I know. I told him it wasn’t worth it, but he had them made anyway.” He shrugs sheepishly. “Now I use them all the time because I feel guilty that they cost so much.”

You go back to your own workout, now and then glancing over to see what he’s doing. You tell yourself it’s curiosity. You’re lying; it’s his muscles. Fortunately for you, he doesn’t seem to notice, but you have to stop when Nat comes in because she absolutely would.

During another break, lying on one of the mats, you doze off a bit and only wake up when Natasha says your name.

“Are you ready?” she asks, squatting by your side.

Anxiety twists in your chest. “I think so. Is it already time?”

She nods and stands, offering you a hand to help you up. “Bruce is waiting for you.”

Working off nervous energy has made you sweaty and sticky, so you’re hesitant to go directly back, but you’re also too anxious and excited to stop and shower before you go. You take the elevator, nervously rocking on your feet until the doors slide open.

Banner greets you again and ushers you deeper into the lab to a large machine that kind of reminds you of an airport metal detector, except that it’s fully encased in glass. He presses a button on the control panel and the front of the glass opens up.

“I’m ready when you are.” He gestures toward the open door.

You take a breath and step inside, and he closes the glass door behind you.

“Stand in the white circle,” he says, voice muffled.

You look down and center yourself.

“Ready?”

You take another deep breath and flash a grin. “Hit me.”

He hits a few keys and the machine whirrs to life. The very air around you begins to vibrate, and the sensation reverberates through your bones. It’s not pleasant, but it isn’t painful either; it’s just really weird.

You open your mouth a little, but forget what you’re about to say when you feel your teeth rattling against each other. It’s unsettling enough that you opt for closing your jaw tightly to prevent it from happening again. You realize after what feels like a solid five minutes that you never asked how long the process was going to take. But you’re not willing to open your mouth again to ask, so you just shut your eyes and wait for it to stop.

Another strange sensation takes you: a warmth that blooms from beneath your sternum, and slowly spreads to your extremities. Again, it’s not awful, just strange. Once you feel it in the top of your scalp and the ends of your fingers and toes, it grows uncomfortably warm before fading almost instantly, along with the deep vibration.

Your ears start to ring, and your body feels as though it’s still buzzing, even though you know it’s stopped. It takes a moment to relax your jaw, which is stiff and painful now, and your voice creaks when you speak. “I forgot to ask how long that would take,” you croak.

The door opens, and you step out on shaky legs.

“That was twenty-five minutes,” Bruce replies, “but it’ll take a couple days for the powers to kick in and your body to recover. You’re going to be pretty lethargic and weak, but functional till then.”

You laugh a little. “I didn’t think about that either. It’s a good thing I don’t have to walk home.”

“We’ll have someone drive you.” He helps prop you up and leads you to a nearby chair. “Your legs should be back to normal, more or less, in maybe thirty minutes. You can sit in here until then.”

You nod, sitting back. “I think I’ll take a little nap, if you don’t mind.”

He smiles. “That’s fine. I’ll wake you when you’re good to go.”

Your eyes are already shut. “Mm-hm. Thanks.”

[mc-lukanette]

*crawls over completely exhausted* No Canon Lukanette... Need fluff... maybe salt too...

Luka gave Marinette's parents a smile as he waited for Marinette to come downstairs, though to say he was concerned was an understatement. He and Marinette hadn't been dating for long, but he knew something was wrong due to her song singing even more stress-filled notes than usual. He wanted to talk to her about it, but also wanted her to open up to him herself when she was ready.

Wanting to focus on smiling for her when she came down, Luka shook off the thought and stared up at Marinette's trap door. Seeing that she hadn't come down yet - understandable given that she had no idea he was there - he pulled out his phone and navigated to her contact. However, just before he could tap on it, there was an abrupt, loud, and unusual noise coming from Marinette's room, followed by the sound of Marinette yelping and presumably hitting the floor.

Luka gasped. “Marinette!”

Not even thinking, he hurried upstairs, phone clutched tightly in his hand as he pushed the trap door up and let himself in.

Over a dozen tiny kwami were speeding around her room, each with distinct voices and one of whom he recognized as Sass. He'd initially thought that the Liberty was chaos, and it was, but there was something different about fifteen little melodies all moving around simultaneously and wreaking havoc. They hadn't even seemed to notice that he was there.

There was also a ladybug-patterned ellipsoid lying on the table in the middle of it all, though Luka's eyes fixated mostly on Marinette lying there on the floor, now staring at him with wide eyes as he took in the whole situation.

"L-luka!" she greeted, voice forced. "W-what a surprise! I mean, you must be surprised at my toy collection! See, there's—there’s this magnetism thing going on that lets them seem like they're flying and—"

She was cut off as one of the kwami accidentally dropped something to the floor, making her flinch from the loud noise. Even the sound all around the room was overwhelming, the little beings ignoring Marinette’s panic in favor of playing with her things.

That's when the tears started, subtly at first until Marinette let out a whimper.

Ignoring all the revelations he just went through, Luka hurried to Marinette's side, helping her up and checking her for injuries. "Marinette, are you okay—"

"You know!" she cut in, running her fingers anxiously through her hair. "You're not supposed to know!"

He took a breath, recognizing that he was going to have to deal with these revelations now. "It's okay. I promise, I'd never—"

"No, it's not okay!" she argued, throwing her hands out. "I've been guardian for just a few days and this—this isn't—! I already—and now the kwami are out—!" She slumped and dropped her gaze to the floor, ashamed. "I'm a bad guardian. I'm a bad girlfriend. I couldn't protect you from knowing!"

"Marinette, you're not a bad girlfriend. You—" He paused, something occurring to him. "Protect me...?"

He hadn't been Viperion for long, but Luka remembered the importance given to secret identities. He understood that it was a form of protecting oneself and one's loved ones, meaning that a permanent hero like Ladybug needed to keep hers a secret the most.

"Is..." His stomach twisted in knots as he remembered all the dates she'd had to either miss or postpone. He bent down, trying to look at her face, and when he still couldn't, he gently cupped her face and encouraged her to make eye contact with him. "Is that why—"

"Yes! That's why I have to keep cutting our dates short, and not being there for you, and not going on patrols with Chat, and why I haven't had time to take those stupid Adrien pictures down! I can't do anything right!"

At some point, the volume of her voice had finally drawn the attention of the kwami, who all stared at her like children watching their parent having a breakdown and feeling awkward about it. Luka paid them no mind, his heart breaking as he processed all the information Marinette was telling him while all he could do was pull her into a hug and just hold her.

"I'm sorry I found out like this," he admitted, running his hand up and down along her back. "I'm glad that I know but I would've wanted you to share that secret with me instead."

"I-I'm sor—"

"Please don't apologize, Marinette," he gently begged. "I hate hearing songs with meanings I don't agree with. You don't have anything to feel sorry for. If I had the ladybug earrings instead, I would've had to do the same thing as you, and you wouldn't have asked me to apologize, would you?"

She looked up at him, expression pained and full of so many burdens that he couldn't believe he hadn't seen before. He brushed her fringe aside and rested his palm against her forehead, concerned about how pale she seemed and worried that she'd stress herself to a cold.

She leaned into his touch, then further until he was forced to move his hand away. She buried her face in his chest, surprising him as she hugged him tightly. Her song turned from the harsh wail of an electric guitar to the mellow tones of an acoustic, and he sighed in a mixture of relief and happiness.

"...Luka," she murmured, lightly clutching whatever fabric she could reach. "The movie. We'll miss it at this rate."

He hummed, half in response to what she said and half in content. "You're so much more important than the movie."

His heart skipped a beat when she actually giggled, her grip on him loosening and the hug turning to something she did because she wanted to, not for comfort. "More important than Jagged Stone?"

He chuckled, burying his face into her hair as he returned the hug. "Always. Even my idol can't compete with my muse."

She leaned further into him, her melody picking up hints off a bell chiming happily. She almost knocked him over from how much of her weight she was putting on him, but he didn't protest and even enjoyed it; it meant she was trusting him with her secrets instead of shouldering the weight herself.

"I know I couldn't have known," he began, "but I'm sorry that our dates took up your time. I never wanted to cause you any stress."

"But I wanted to!" she insisted, jolting up to look at him. "It's just—it's been a lot, and—"

He placed two fingers against her lips before she could start rambling. "Marinette, I don't need to go on normal dates to have fun with you."

She blinked, waiting for him to move his fingers before asking, "Y-you don't?"

He smiled. "Of course not. I can hang out here while you work, while you do important stuff."

With a small, amused snort, she pulled away from him and wiped any stray tears away. "You're 'important stuff.'"

He grinned like the love-struck fool that he was, then shrugged. "Well, I'll still be here anyway then, right?"

"That's true." She paused, glancing off to the side in consideration, then looked back at him as she asked, "in that case... would you help me with something?"

"Anything," he answered immediately.

She pointed, his gaze drawn to her wall full of Adrien pictures. "Like I said, I haven't had the time, and... I've been wanting to remodel forever."

He was more than happy to help, and there was a selfish part of him that considered it far better than any movie they could've seen.

—————

It took a bit more time than either of them anticipated to take down all of the images, but between the two of them, it wasn't a hard job. The biggest time-waster during the whole thing was Marinette's rambling, but Luka welcomed it wholeheartedly.

Due to not watching much TV, he honestly hadn't heard about what'd happened when Jagged Stone had been at the bakery and the camera crew had invaded Marinette's privacy, and he couldn't believe how much mental stress she must've gone through. After all, even though he and Juleka shared a room, there was still a divider for when they needed their privacy, so he wasn't unaware about how personal it was to have one's room recorded without their consent, even if nothing embarrassing got caught on camera.

It seemed cruel to know that Paris' supposedly lucky superhero was perhaps one of the unluckiest people he'd ever known.

Almost on cue, just when the last picture was down and Marinette was debating on what to do with them, her phone went off with a ringtone that sounded very much like danger. Looking over, there was a butterfly symbol flashing on the screen and Marinette's expression faltered at the sight of it.

"Akuma alert," she said flatly, with a pout that would've been cute had he not known what it meant. She hesitated, eyes flicking from him to her phone. "Um... look, I... I have to—"

"Go," he interrupted with a reassuring smile. "I'm not going anywhere, and I'll be here when you're done."

"But—" She frowned and glared at her phone, clearly knowing that she had to leave but not wanting to.

"I mean it, Marinette. It's okay."

She looked at him like she'd never heard those words from anyone else before, eyes vulnerable but fond. She gave him a nod, a brief smile flickering across her face before she turned away and rushed to the stairs. She shouted for her transformation on the way out and Luka watched as her clothes shifted into her ladybug-patterned bodysuit.

When she was completely gone, Luka felt a sudden unsteadiness and leaned against the table for support. It wasn't that he was shocked exactly to hear that Marinette was Ladybug, but he was still overloaded nonetheless.

As his hand rested on the table, he felt the heel of his palm brush something and looked down to see the pile of Adrien pictures next to him. It sent another rush through his body at the reminder that she'd asked him to help her take them down. He was dating her, sure, but he wasn't foolish enough to think that there were no lingering feelings for Adrien. He knew where she stood and he was okay letting her test the waters with him, as she did have feelings for him and who was he to complain if his crush wanted to date him? Besides, he couldn't help wanting to see if maybe it would truly make their bond stronger.

Looking at the wall now, clear of anything but the pink paint, he knew this was real and ended up wishing he'd brought his guitar.

Then, remembering the akuma alert on Marinette's phone, Luka pulled out his own and began to search, eventually finding what she already had: a direct link to watch streams and updates on whatever akuma or sentimonster shenanigans were going on. He knew well enough that he would only give himself anxiety from it, but he wanted to watch his girlfriend in action as a form of support.

Gosh, Ladybug was his girlfriend.

He took a deep breath to steady himself as he watched the footage, his eyes locked to the screen and only shifting when he felt various figures drawing close. He looked up to see that the kwami had all gathered around him, watching the screen closely.

"So..." the pig-looking kwami began, fiddling with their own paws like they knew they were being awkward. "Have you ever wanted to be a hero?"

There was a hiss off to the side, Sass cutting in with, "He already has me."

Luka wasn't feeling up to smile at that, debating with himself before sighing. "Marinette works really hard, and her song is full of sour notes right now," he said. Stepping away and heading for the chaise lounge, he sat down and added, "I hope you can figure out how to rewrite them."

The kwami all exchanged looks, some confused by the metaphor and others who perhaps understood but didn't know how to follow up on it. Luka didn't give them his attention, focusing on the akuma battle playing on his phone.

As he'd expected, it made him a little nervous actually seeing Ladybug in action due to now knowing it was his girlfriend fighting out there. He believed in her abilities and mentally cheered her on, but he just kept remembering all the akuma he'd known about and how stressful it had to have been.

Off to the side, some of the kwami joined forces to help pick up some of the items they'd previously dropped on the floor. It was only after Marinette's room looked as it did before that they properly joined Luka to watch the battle with him.

It was a start.

—————

The battle between Ladybug and the akuma (and Chat Noir was there he supposed) seemed to be getting into its final verse when Luka heard the sound of the trap door being grabbed and clicked open, making him jump. He was only able to whisper a, "Hide," so the kwami could act before Sabine peered inside the room and took a curious look around.

Apparently, they all thought that huddling against his back was a great hiding spot, and he could only smile sheepishly at Sabine while attempting to ignore the weird feeling.

"You're still here?" Sabine asked. "I thought you were going somewhere, and..." She raised a brow, looking around once more. "Where's Marinette?"

"Ah," Luka began, his mind rushing for an excuse, "we actually decided to have our date here instead. Marinette just went up to her balcony to grab something."

It didn't feel good to lie, though he also felt a sense of accomplishment in protecting Marinette's secret. Was this what Marinette dealt with all the time; having to lie to people even if she didn't want to?

Sabine glanced up briefly to where the balcony was, then back to him, slightly confused but rolling with it. "Alright. Do you two need anything?"

"No, ma'am. Thank you though," he replied, hoping it didn't sound forced.

Thankfully, Sabine nodded and left without asking any further questions, the kwami emerging and clinging to Luka while they peered at the now-closed trap door. Luka breathed a sigh of relief, then went back to watching the akuma battle on his phone.

The rest of the fight took a couple minutes, and all that was left to do afterward was wait for Ladybug to return. Once again, Luka wished he had his guitar, making a mental note to get all of his feelings out when he got home, as typical music apps just didn't do anything for him.

An expected "thump" eventually came from the balcony, and the kwami drifting away from Luka as Ladybug descended and landed on her bed. She saw Luka staring at her and initially flinched, but it was clearly a reflex from people seeing her as Ladybug where she shouldn't be, and she hurried down to meet with him afterward. Luka hopped to his feet, not hesitating to meet her halfway and envelop her in a hug, earning a squeak out of her.

"L-luka?"

"Sorry," he murmured. "Just... I got to think about everything you must've gone through without m—" He choked off, suddenly embarrassed, then corrected, "—someone to help you."

She blinked, then giggled and hugged him back. "You're my boyfriend. You're apologizing for hugging me and being worried about sounding selfish?" She nestled her face against his shoulder and he blushed at how warm she was. "Don't. I like it when you're a little selfish, Luka. It grounds me; makes me feel like you're not totally out of my league."

Luka scoffed, nuzzling his head against hers. "You're in a league all your own. I'm literally dating a superhero."

"Trust me, it's not as cool as it sounds."

"I disagree. I think you're really cool."

She blushed profusely. "H-hey..."

He chuckled. "By the way, your mom came to check up on us."

Ladybug gasped, then pulled back, eyes wide and concerned. She was clearly about to apologize, so he cut her off before she could.

"I told her that we were having our date here and that you were getting something from the balcony. Everything's alright."

Her shoulders eased. She let out a sigh of relief as her head fell back against his shoulder. "Thank you."

He hummed contently, resting his hand along her back and keeping it there. Then, realizing when Sabine came up earlier and might do it again, he reminded her, "You're still Ladybug."

"Huh? ...Oh!" she said, though with less panic than normal and unwilling to recoil from the happy spot she was in.

He heard the whisper of her de-transformation phrase and winced as the light engulfed her, slowly turning her back into Marinette. He felt the spandex under his hand turn into fabric and Marinette's breath against his skin as she exhaled.

A kwami that Luka deduced was Marinette's flew a small distance away, eyeing Luka warily and semi-critically. Luka didn't blame her - he wasn't supposed to know - but he also knew that it was far too late to change anything now, and there was no way he was going to abandon Marinette or pretend he knew nothing. He imagined that the kwami knew that too.

"...I'm Tikki," the kwami greeted finally. "It's nice to meet you officially, Luka."

Luka gave her a nod in return, then stiffened somewhat as Marinette squeezed him tighter, burying her face further against him like she truly cherished him.

"It's still a lot," she whispered. "Is it okay if you hug me a little longer?"

"Of course." Though, he paused for a moment before adding, "Would it be more comfortable for you if we move to your chaise?"

"Hm?" She pulled away just enough to look down and realize that they were still awkwardly standing at the bottom of the steps to her bed. "Oh! Yeah, I mean—I didn't even—"

"Hey." He tenderly cupped her cheek, offering a smile. "I didn't complain, did I?"

She looked briefly surprised, making him wonder just how much she'd had to apologize in the past. They slowly made their way over to the chaise lounge, Luka settling down and opening his arms for her so she could settle onto his lap and snuggle against him. He leaned back against the chaise, throwing his legs across the length of it, then wrapped an arm around Marinette to make her feel secure.

"This is nice. It's... um—" She peeked up at him, then grinned shyly. "—melodic? Is that what you'd call it?"

He couldn't stop himself from snorting.

Marinette blushed in embarrassment. "H-hey! I'm trying, okay?"

"I know." He took a strand of her hair in his hand and stroked it. "You always try, and I love that about you."

She let out a series of whines at that, but doesn't protest the compliment either. She nestled against his chest, keeping her face turned away enough to still talk to him without her voice being muffled.

"I just... want to know more about you, Luka," she told him. "You're so sweet and I felt awful having to ditch you. Didn't it bother you?"

He gave a one-armed shrug. "You were busy. I unders—"

"Luka."

He stopped, meeting her firm gaze and knowing that he wasn't getting out of this easily. He sighed, admitting, "...Yeah, it bothered me, but it wasn't because of you or that I didn't trust you. I... see—my dad..." He rubbed the back of his neck, realizing that he'd never told anyone this story before. "I never knew who he was. I asked my mom so many times, but she never gave me an answer. Whenever you had to leave and lie to me, I..."

"Oh." She raised herself up more to meet him closer to eye level. "I'm so sorry—wait—sorry, you told me not to apologize—Sorry! I did it agai—ACK!"

He laughed, feeling warm and delighted by how much she cared about him and wanted him to feel secure in their relationship. He squeezed her shoulder in reassurance, wanting to nuzzle her for how cute she was being and just barely able to hold himself back.

"Don't worry about it. I'm glad you were looking out for me, but you deserve someone to look out for you too."

She pouted a bit at the heartfelt comment, then smiled and raised her hand to settle on his along her shoulder.

He hummed, pausing purposefully for effect before asking, "...So, what does the great guardian Marinette want to do now?"

"Oh my gosh, Luka."

He grinned, happy to compliment her until she was completely red. "How about the brave and heroic Ladybug then?"

"Luka."

He reached up to caress her cheek with his thumb. "But, if you ask me, I like the kind, sincere civilian Marinette best."

"LUKA!"

—————

The rest of their "date" passed by smoothly, Marinette's parents having left them alone so as to not interrupt anything. Marinette had idly brought up the idea that the movie might still be playing - just at a different time than they planned on going - but Luka brushed off the idea and insisted that he was happy there and didn't need to go on a "real" date with her to have fun, opting to leave it up to her.

And... yeah, neither of them were willing to leave their current position and exchange it for having to sit in different seats at a theater with other people around. They opted to just stare at the ceiling and talk, the kwami having respectfully retreated to Marinette's bed to give them privacy.

Talks of their past meetings and when she left to become Ladybug soon turned into a game of finishing Jagged Stone lyrics. Luka, either by being the bigger fan or just having an easier time remembering them, ended up winning in the end, though he couldn't have expected Marinette to follow up by immediately leaving his lap. He'd held back a whine at the sudden lack of warmth and wondered if maybe she'd been teasing him with some sort of punishment by going away.

But then she'd returned with a tiny pink gift box, and inside was a guitar pick necklace signed by Jagged Stone himself.

"He came into the bakery the other day and I had him sign it for you," she explained. Taking it out to fully present it to him, she asked, "Do...do you like it?"

"I love it, Marinette," he replied immediately, reaching out to feel the guitar pick and properly appreciate it. "I can have this?"

She smiled in response, holding the necklace out in a gesture that made his heart skip a beat, realizing that she was offering to put it on him herself. He leaned close, feeling the light brush of her fingers against his neck as she slipped it onto him. He silently hoped that it was durable because he was absolutely never taking it off.

Marinette's hands lingered on the string even when the necklace was fully on, Luka meeting her gaze to see that she was looking at him with all the love he'd ever dreamed of her offering him. He didn't say a word and neither did she, but with a light tug on his necklace, he was pulled towards her into a kiss. It was definitely too deep for their first but also so nice that neither of them cared, and not even the Ladybug revelation could outmatch his surprise at being so readily smooched.

Luka reached for the hand grabbing his necklace, Marinette letting go of it so they could thread their fingers together. His song was going crazy as she leaned forward, clearly wanting more from him and him being wonderfully helpless to resist her. He breathed her in, his other hand finding its place on her side. Her own hand rose up so her fingers could settle against the back of his neck, and he couldn't bring himself to be embarrassed by the sound he made when she started playing with his hair.

She didn't even pull away when their kiss broke, merely pressing her forehead to his while they each caught their breath. Despite the boldness she'd just displayed, she somehow couldn't maintain eye contact and ended up looking elsewhere while all he could do was stare at her in a daze.

"S-sor—" She paused, remembering again that he told her not to apologize. "I-I mean, I'm... not sorry? I—ah—remembered you saying that music is simpler than words, so I just—I thought that maybe I shouldn't ask you with words and just... play it instead?" Luka could feel the heat radiating from her blush as she hurriedly added, "Um... is that okay?"

He answered her with another kiss.

[graaythekwami]

The Little Things - ML One-Shot

(Spoilers for the season 4 episode Hack-San)

-------

"Out for a solo patrol, Chat Noir?"

Chat Noir jumped slightly, not quite use to hearing an unfamiliar voice up here on the rooftops, and turned. The figure was standing on a chimney a ways from him, the reds of her costume matching the setting sun.

"Scarabella?" Chat Noir said, looking at the temporary Ladybug heroine he had met the other day. His surprise quickly gave way to worry, eyes widening slightly. "Did something happen to Ladybug? Is there an akuma out right now? Is–"

Scarabella held up her hands, but didn't come closer. "No no no, everything is okay– I just wanted to talk to you, that's all, and Ladybug said you often did some patrols in the evening..."

He gave a tight smile, shoulders relaxing slightly. "Not really a patrol, not like what me and M'Lady do when we patrol. It's just... to get some fresh air, I suppose."

He was slightly startled when he turned and found Scarabella walking towards him, as he hadn't heard her steps. She had some papers in her hands, and an uncertain smile on her face. She paused a little ways away from him.

"Is it okay if we talk for a bit?" Scarabella asked. "I don't have a lot of time, and then I can leave you to your... 'patrol'."

"What's up?" Chat Noir asked, trying to sound as casual as possible. His feelings on Scarabella were... mixed. She was an ally and she had spirit, but he would be lying if he said there was no bitterness when he thought about her. About what she knew and why she was there.

"I... I wanted to just show you this," Scarabella said, holding up the papers in her hand, before carefully setting it down on the roof near him, before retreating back slightly. "I had to edit out a few 'tips' for identity reasons, and Ladybug doesn't know I'm showing this to you, but considering my sudden appearance I figured maybe it would help if you saw it."

Chat glanced at the papers, then back at the spare heroine. "I don't want to go behind Ladybug's back."

Scarabella blinked, then let out a small laugh. "Oh, no, no, it's not like it's something I can't show you. It's just the list of tips she gave me of how to be Ladybug while she was gone."

"Okay?"

Scarabella smiled. "Read them, would you? Please?"

Chat Noir looked at the papers, before carefully picking them up and unfolding them. Sure enough he found a list of 'tips', each one carefully numbered off. His eyes scanned down the list, noting a few numbers were missing, which must have been the editing she had been referring to.

Chat Noir's eyes jumped back up to the top, and began reading. He could tell right away that it was indeed written by his Lady, and he could almost hear her voice as he read.

Tip 1 - Keep the earrings in at all times, they are easy to misplace. DO NOT TAKE THEM OFF.

Tip 2 - Always have sweets for Tikki on hand.

Tip 3 - Not just for recharging if an akuma appears, make sure you have something she can snack on if she's hungry.

Tip 4 - No. Seriously. Holders know no fury like a kwami starved.

Chat Noir snickered, knowing fully well what she meant. His interactions with Tikki had been limited, and she had been a very sweet kwami. Ladybug told pretty much the same story... except for the times she didn't have cookies or macarons on hand for her kwami. It turned out the little Ladybug kwami was just as passionate about her sweets as Plagg was with his cheese.

Tip 11 - Tell Chat Noir what's going on right away if an akuma shows up. Since I wasn't able to talk my way into staying in Paris like I thought I didn't get time to tell him I was leaving.

Tip 12 - If you see Chat Noir patrolling at night don't worry, it doesn't mean there's an akuma or somewhere you need to take my place. My Kitty is a free spirit and Paris is our city.

Tip 13 - Leave out croissants for him if he happens to come by where you are on patrol.

Tip 14 - The chocolate covered ones are his favorite. Chat loves anything with passion fruit too.

Tip 15 - Chat Noir likes any kind of sweets, actually, but try to get him his favorites if you can.

There was a small smile on his face as he read, eyes carefully looking over each word, warmth in his heart. The tips soon drifted back towards things regarding the Miraculous, a good dozen involving Lucky Charms and explaining how the yoyo worked.

Tip 25 - Lucky Charms might be bigger than you think! Be prepared to leapt out of the way in case a piano comes crashing down instead of a pencil.

Tip 26 - Don't ask Tikki to explain Lucky Charms. She'll be vague and she'll do it on purpose.

Tip 27 - Don't try to force a Lucky Charm to work. It's just kind of instinctual? I don't know how to describe it.

Tip 28 - Ask Chat Noir for help if the Lucky Charm is too confusing. He's been Misterbug before and has helped me defeat villains with countless Lucky Charms.

Tip 29 - Just ask Chat Noir if you have any questions, he's a professional.

Tip 30 - Don't ask him so many questions though that you stress him out! Akuma fights are hard enough and with him being the most experienced he'll have enough to worry about without a bunch of questions.

Tip 31 - Just follow Kitty's lead, he knows what to do.

Tip 32 - Chat Noir has good instincts and enhanced senses, listen to him.

Tip 33 - When Chat Noir makes a joke try to laugh, even if you think it's not funny. It makes him happy. :)

"My jokes are always funny, My Lady!" Chat Noir exclaimed in protest, though there was a smile on his face.

Tip 34 - Make sure Chat Noir is happy.

Tip 35 - Don't make fun of his purring, he's self conscious about it even though it's adorable. (He embraces everything cat except for the purring, I don't know why.)

Tip 36 - Purring doesn't always mean he's happy! Cats can purr when they're hurt! If he takes a hit and you hear him purr then you got to defeat the akuma as quickly as possible! Sooner you can cast the Miraculous Ladybugs the sooner Chat Noir isn't hurting!

Tip 37 - Don't let Chat Noir take any hits for you.

Tip 38 - Seriously. He does that way too much and I don't like watching it. Stupid self-sacrificing cat. Make sure he stays safe.

Tip 39 - Or else.

"These aren't even tips at this point!" He said, holding back a laugh.

"She does that a lot," Scarabella said with a fond smile. "With 675 'tips' a good chunk of them are ramblings."

"Six hundred and what-?" Chat said, quickly flicking through the papers and towards the end. Sure enough the very last one stared back up at him, the same number as Scarabella had promised.

Tip 675 - When you say "Miraculous Ladybug" don't forget to throw the Lucky Charm.

He flicked back a few more pages, eyes scanning the various notes that had been left. Many were just like he had expected when Scarabella had first told him what the list was: advice on what to do with different types of akumas, how the timer worked, tips for finding the akumatized object, and what to say to a victim after they were freed from Shadow Moth's control.

But then there were others, small little mentions of him and things he hadn't even realized his Lady knew or noticed, things he didn't know people cared about.

Tip 142 - If Chat Noir is dismissive with how his day has gone crack a few jokes. He tries to cover up when he's had a bad day and this is the best way to lift his spirits.

Tip 143 - Chat Noir loves hugs. Quick hugs, tight hugs, long hugs, he adores them.

Tip 144 - Chat likes to be scratched under the chin and behind his faux ears. It makes him purr, but don't mention the purring (see tip 36).

Tip 145 - Chat Noir is a cuddler.

Tip 146 - Ignore all the last few tips. Respect Chat Noir's personal space.

Tip 147 - But don't be distant either, support him! Fist bumps, pats on the back, you know, be friendly.

Tip 148 - You better be nice to my Kitty. I'll be watching all akuma coverage.

Tip 149 - No booping Chat Noir on the nose. That's our thing.

Tip 150 - No bonking him with the yoyo, carrying him in your arms, or using the nicknames 'chaton' or 'kitty', again those are our things, not yours.

Tip 151 - You can use the nicknames 'Chat' or 'CN'.

Tip 152 - He may kiss your hand. Chat Noir is a gentleman, don't let the costume fool you.

"M'lady..." Chat Noir said softly.

Tip 355 - Let Chat Noir handle the media, he's a pro at that.

Tip 356 - Don't leave him alone to deal with all the reporters though, that's a lot of pressure.

Tip 357 - Chat's ears and tail can tell you a lot about how he's feeling. I've read a lot of cat behavior articles and it's helped me a lot.

"Hey!" Chat Noir protested, even though his Lady wasn't here to see it.

Tip 598 - If anyone makes any comment about Chat Noir being dangerous or being a sidekick, you don't hold back.

Tip 599 - If it's a reporter that makes this comment give me their name and who they work for so I can make sure they never get an interview from the heroes again.

Tip 600 - Send Chat Noir a cat meme on the yoyo to cheer him up if anyone does say anything about him.

"I need to go," Scarabella said softly. "Feel free to keep those, I... I just wanted you to know that she was thinking about you. You mean a lot to her, Kittycat."

Chat Noir looked up at Scarabella, vision blurring slightly, but a smile was on his face. "I don't think 'Kittycat' was on the list of approved nicknames, Scar."

Scarabella scowled. "Well I can tell you that one isn't on my list of approved nicknames either."

Chat Noir grinned. "I'm sure it will grow on you."

"Purrhaps," Scarabella said, before giving a salute and a smile. She then tossed her yoyo, swinging away. Chat Noir watched her for a moment, before looking back down at the list he had been given.

He smiled, holding the papers close to his chest as he laid down on the roof, letting out a happy sigh.

[young-dumb-and-vaccinated]

The Sommelier (Hannigram x Female!Reader) pt. 11

Y/n returns to Quantico and sees a familiar face. 

@deadman-inc-bikeshop @viviace and @dovahdokren 

Trigger warnings: mention of FGM, graphic descriptions of violence, bombs, religiously motivated violence, torture, cults, implied sex abuse

Out of everywhere you expected to see him, the FBI headquarters was the last place you'd have possibly thought of.

But he was there. His intimidating height was even more pronounced now that he wasn't sitting on a bar stool. The harsh fluorescent lighting enunciated his sunken bone structure, giving him an eerie halo. The fact that he was standing over a flayed corpse didn't help.

"Ms. [L/N]!" Jack greeted. "This is Dr. Hannibal Lecter, he occasionally acts as a consultant on large cases such as this one."

"Hello again, Miss [L/N]." Hannibal said, eyeing you up and down with an unreadable expression. "I'm dreadfully sorry these are the circumstances under which we have to meet, but it is a delight to see you nonetheless."

"Dr. Lecter." You nodded, trying to cover your nervousness with a smile. "It's always a pleasure."

"You two know each other." Will said in complete non-surprise.

"Her bar is the only one in town that carries my favorite Bordeaux." Hannibal explained. "Though I've come to find that the bartender is excellent company."

Something about how he said "her bar" made your heart flutter. You'd convinced him that you were in charge, and you were determined to keep it that way.

"Not to break up the reunion." Dr. Katz interrupted your thoughts. "But we are standing in front of a dead cultist's body."

Jack cleared his throat. "Thank you, Dr. Katz. What can you tell us about this woman?"

"Her name is Catherine Miller, or at least it was." Dr. Katz began, grabbing the corpse by its left hand and revealing a scar on its inner arm. "I think Chase may have just been calling her 'unwoman'."

"Erasing a person's identity is one of the many warning signs of a dangerous cult." Hannibal observed, crossing the floor.

"Usually they try to change their names in an attempt to make them shed their genuine personality in favor of the cult personality." Jack agreed. "But she must have been so far gone to willingly give up her entire identity."

"That's not even the beginning." Dr. Katz rushed to the other side of the examination table. She paused for a second and lowered her head in respect. "She was mutilated."

All eyes turned to the body's lower half. Dr. Katz took the corpse's hand and rubbed her thumb gently across the back, as if to comfort it. You and her shared a look of mutual disgust and anger. No words had to be exchanged.

You were the one to break the silence. "In Handmaid's Tale, circumcision was a punishment for... gender treason."

"Homosexuality." Hannibal said, looking down. "Well, more accurately, any sexuality or gender identity that exists outside Gilead's biblical worldview."

"I wonder if that's why Chase strapped her to a bomb." Dr. Katz added with quiet conviction. "He needed to destroy any evidence of brutality."

"She said that she once was a sinful woman like me." You said. "Or something to that effect."

"Was she perhaps under the impression that you existed outside of Gilead's biblical worldview?" Hannibal asked, looking at you out of the corner of his eye. He was asking out of his own curiosity and you could tell.

"Well, I am." You admitted. "But I'm not sure how she or Chase could have known that."

"Evangelicals make assumptions about people all the time." Dr. Katz groaned. "I wouldn't worry too much about it."

"And here I thought the bible said 'judge not lest ye be judged'." Will added, not looking up from the body. He took a few steps and pointed to some strange laceration. "What's this?"

"I have no fucking idea." Dr. Katz answered. "It looks like someone tried to skin her like a deer, but only in that one spot."

"And it's done very sloppily at that." Said Hannibal.

"Yeah, well when you're guided by the hand of god, you don't need a medical license." Dr. Katz's voice was sharp with sarcasm.

"I'll bet that's why Chase strapped her to a bomb." Will said. "It would destroy all the evidence of brutality."

Dr. Katz looked sadly on the body and closed its eyes. "I think Catherine has suffered enough for the time being. I'm going to close her up."

Jack gestured to you. "Miss [L/N], Will and I are going to examine the crime scene. Dr. Lecter will be taking your statement."

"I know it’s unorthodox, but I am nothing if not a professional." Hannibal peered down at you.

Hannibal silently escorted you to an out-of-the-way office where he promised you’d have some privacy. Privacy to discuss what, you were unsure. 

“I’m sure you have a million questions, Miss [L/N].” He said, closing the door behind you. “But if I could trouble you with a few of my own, I can make it worth your while.” 

He sat on a nearby couch and patted the space beside him. You awkwardly stood in the middle of the room, looking everywhere but at him.

“Come, sit by me.” He beckoned you with his fingers. “I’d like you to be close.” 

You let your feet carry you to his side, still avoiding any eye contact. You fidgeted with your purse straps and kept your head down. 

“You and Will Graham have met?” He asked.

You wordlessly nodded your head. You had a sinking feeling that he was about to scold you. 

“Have you been intimate?” 

You opened your mouth to protest, but he stopped you. “There’s no use lying to me, Miss [L/N].” 

You dropped your shoulders. “How did you know?” 

He leaned towards you and took a short, audible breath in. “I find it quite hard to believe that you wear the same aftershave.” 

“Is he your boyfriend or something?” You said, somewhat sarcastically. 

“Or something.” Hannibal tilted his head. “An object of my affection, is probably a more accurate term.” 

“You want me to back off?” You raised your eyebrows. You had just witnessed this man examine a flayed corpse without so much as a flinch. You didn’t want to get on his bad side. 

“No.” 

His answer took you by surprise. “Pardon?” 

“When two objects of your affection find each other, there are certainly far worse fates than to see them enamored with one another.” Hannibal explained. “It can lead to some highly desirable outcomes.” 

You understood what he was saying, you just couldn’t believe it. “Like what?” 

He grinned. “I think you already know what.” 

“You mean, like a threesome?” 

So much for professionalism. 

Hannibal clicked his tongue. “Now don’t make it sound so crass, darling. I’m an intelligent man of strong moral character. I’m not driven by lust alone.” 

At least he shared your contempt there. The word ‘threesome’ conjured up bad memories of being approached by straight couples on dating apps who saw you as nothing but a disposable sex toy to boost a straight man’s ego. For that reason, you stayed away from the idea altogether. Hannibal, however, had you reconsidering. 

“So a throuple.” You said. As the word left your mouth, you found yourself more amenable to the idea than you’d anticipated. “I just don’t know how I’d feel being shared between two men.” 

“Oh, [F/N],” he purred. “You would be worshipped by two men. Loved obsessively. Given everything you could ever desire. Not to mention protected at all costs.” 

That last point struck you. For so long, you had lived alone and in fear. And now, you would take any opportunity to not be alone. 

"You like the sound of that. I can tell." Hannibal broke the silence.

"I can't hide anything from you, can I?" You said, pushing your hair behind your ear.

He smiled proudly. "I thought so."

[spunky-89]

All Power (Kol Mikaelson x Female Reader)

A/N: Woo a new fic! Cause updating or finishing old WIPs is apparently not as cool. Also, this fic is a bit of a crossover from Teen Wolf, not anything like major, just some references and such.

Word Count: 1.8 k

Warnings: None that I can think of

The air was tense in the courtyard as Kol stood protectively in front of his lover, facing off against his pain-in-the-ass hybrid brother. Elijah stood between the two trying to keep them from tearing each other apart. Freya was off to the side holding herself, feeling guilty for starting this disagreement.

“You come anywhere near her Nik and I swear it will be the last thing you do.” Kol threatened.

“I don’t like liars, especially not in the house where my daughter sleeps,” Klaus growled.

“You really think I wouldn’t make sure that my girlfriend had no ill intent towards my niece? Do you think that low of me brother?”

“Enough, both of you,” Elijah spoke, turning slightly to look at his youngest brother and his lover. “Now, would you care to share what this ruckus is all about?”

“I don’t know, ask Nik.” Kol spat, rage in his eyes.

“You stand there and make me the bad guy when it is your pet human that is lying and has been her whole time with us.” Klaus proclaimed.

“And how do you know this Niklaus?” Elijah inquired.

“Because I sensed it,” Freya spoke up, moving closer to the brewing storm.

“Sensed what Freya?” Kol snapped, becoming more and more fed up with the current situation.

“Something… off,” She tried, struggling to find the words.

“You need to do better than that sister, or else this is a waste of time because you have no grounds to accuse my girlfriend of anything.”

“Enough.” The woman came out from her position behind Kol and came to stand next to him. “Please just stop, all of you.” She requested.

“Darling?” Kol gave her a questioning look and she gave a heavy sigh.

“She isn’t wrong, I’m not human,” She started, avoiding eye contact and staring at the ground. “Well, not entirely human I should say.” She then looked to Klaus, “I’m honestly surprised you didn’t sense it. I mean typically wolves have a sense for this sort of thing.” She remarked.

“Get to the point, my patients is waning fast,” Klaus warned. As he did so, Kol took a threatening step forward, only to be stopped by a hand on his arm.

“Okay, calm down. The short version is I’m a werewolf.” The woman stated plainly.

“You can’t be, you’ve never turned on a full moon,” Kol stated, looking to his girlfriend in confusion.

“That’s because I’m a different breed and I’ve learned to control it.” She then gave a bashful smile at him and said, “I also happen to have an amazing anchor that keeps me grounded.”

“That’s it,” Klaus growled and sped at the supposed werewolf and pinned her to the wall, his eyes glowing golden. “Who are you?”

She saw Kol move to intervene but she shot him a look to let her handle this. She smirked as she took a deep breath and closed her eyes, opening them to reveal her eyes were glowing a vibrant purple, wolfish features taking over her face slightly. And before Klaus could make a comment or move, she dug her claws deep into his side and rake them upwards, causing him to release her in shock. She used that moment to roundhouse kick him away from her.

“Who am I? Well, I’m someone you really don’t want to piss off.” She huffed, fixing her clothes.

Kol was looking at her wide-eyed, never having seen her like that before. He watched in fascination as her face shifted back to the one he loved so much, though the claws on her hands didn’t disappear.

While Kol was focused on her, she was focused on Klaus. She knew she just poked the sleeping bear, or well in this case wolf. She acted casual, but she was ready for a full-fledged brawl. She heard him let out a chuckle, and her heart went icy cold. She knew that kind of chuckle. It was the kind that told her she’d just pissed him off and he was amused by her attempt to hurt him.

“That was a neat trick, love,” He said as he stood back up to his regular height. “But you’ll have to do a lot better than that if you want to hurt me.” He growled as his eyes flared and he started to rush towards the woman. Before he could even get close Kol threw him to the other side of the courtyard.

“I told you Nik, not a hair.” He seethed, standing protectively in front of his girlfriend, who was now minorly terrified and clutched onto the back of his jacket.

“Maybe I should just go,” She murmured to Kol.

“Nonsense, you are still welcome here,” Elijah promised.

Klaus had gotten up and was getting ready to argue when Elijah cut him off.

“Why don’t we give the lady the benefit of the doubt. As it stands, if she had wanted to harm any of us she’s had ample opportunities to do so and has not. We shall hear her out before we jump to any more conclusions.” He stated, his tone leaving no room for argument.

Everyone was slow to move, but eventually, all were gathered in the seating area.

“What do you want to know?” The woman asked, practically perched in Kol’s lap.

“First off, how is there another breed of werewolf?” Elijah asked.

“Well, there’s actually a few. I’m from the French line of werewolves, whereas your brother is of the North American breed. As far as I know, the only other breed is English wolves. But there are many different shifters out there from many cultures. Kitsune, for example, come from Japan.” She explained as best as she could.

“How is it we’ve never heard of any other wolves or shifters before?” Freya asked.

“That I am unsure of, but I’ve met loads of different shifters and other creatures. Where I come from, it’s practically a beacon for supernaturals.”

“And you can control your shifts?” Kol piped up.

“Well for the most part. The way French wolves and shifters work is that you can shift at any time, not just on the full moon. But the full moon makes us more susceptible to turning. But for older wolves, it becomes easier to control your shifts. Whereas baby wolves tend to be much more at risk of turning uncontrollably.”

She then spent the next hour or so explaining the differences between the different wolf breeds and other supernatural creatures, although she never really explained what she was. It was actually Kol that brought up the question.

“Me? Well, I’m kinda a special case. I’m a werewolf, but well, an extremely rare one. It’s why I didn’t tell you who or what I was.” She explained, clearly nervous to reveal who she was. But with one squeeze of the hand from Kol, she sighed and started speaking, “I am the twin sister of Scott McCall, the True Alpha. I am his opposite in most cases which makes us an elite team that is nearly unbeatable. So I am what is called a Compliment Alpha. Part alpha, part beta, all power. It’s why my eyes are purple. It combines the red of an alpha’s eyes and the blue of a beta’s.” She explained, once again flashing her eyes.

“Does that satisfy you Nik? Or does she have to go through her life story before you trust her?” Kol asked, seemingly done with his girlfriend being interrogated.

“I swear to you I am no threat to your family. I didn’t even know of your existence until Kol revealed who and what he was. Vampires are kinda new territory for me. This is not some evil plot to harm you or any Mikaelson. You all have become my new pack, and you don’t hurt your own pack.” She swore.

“I shall allow you to stay, but be warned little wolf, I see even the slightest hint of your inevitable betrayal and I will end you and your brother.” Klaus threatened, but instead of being scared she just gave him a smile.

“I would expect nothing less.” She teased as she stood from the couch. “But just so you know, my old pack and I are hard to kill. Trust me, many have tried, yet here I am.”

Kol stood as well and took her hand as they left for her apartment on the other end of town. He pulled her close by her shoulder and kissed her head as they walked out of the compound.

-----------

When they finally made it back to her apartment, he could see her noticeably relax.

“I have to say, darling, I’ve never seen you kick ass before but I would love to see it again,” Kol murmured as he wrapped his arms around her waist and laid kisses on her neck. She giggled and tried to push him away.

“Stooop,” She whined as she tried to wiggle out of his grip.

Kol, unfortunately, refused to let her go and held her tighter as he relished in her laughter. Moments like this were his favorite because there was just joy in the air. All troubles forgotten and burdens lifted to make room for the contentment he felt when he was with her.

The two settled down on the couch and just sat cuddled up in silence for a while. Kol was the first to break it after about half an hour.

“Would you have ever told me?” He asked, looking down at his lover who suddenly seemed very interested in the couch.

She sighed and sat up. She hated this. She knew he would eventually ask this. And she dreaded it because she didn’t have a good answer. But she knew she had to give him something.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” She started, “My identity and my secret is the reason why I ran here in the first place. The danger became too great for my brother and me to stay together. We had to separate, at least for a little while. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.” She paused as she recalled the day she had to say goodbye to her mother and brother. The physical pain she felt when she got on the plane without him. “I was scared.” she admitted, “I trust you, and I wanted to tell you so many times, but…”

“But what darling? Cm’on darling, I just want to know.”

“If my identity was found out, I would have had to leave again. Which would mean leaving you. And I couldn’t- I can’t lose you too. It would break me. Shatter me to a point that I would become volatile and dangerous to those who came across me. Because my heart’s been broken a few too many times for me to be able to come back from that.” She said quietly, not realizing that tears had begun to stream down her face.

Kol pulled her back into his arms and just held her.

“I swear to you my love, no one will keep me from you. Not even my brother.” He vowed.

[gale-gentlepenguin]

ML What If

(What if Luka Learned the Truth in Truth?)

Ive seen a couple of these 'Fix it' fics for Truth. Which has Luka learn the truth about Marinette being Ladybug.

So you know what, lets explore this.

But before we start we should approach this as logically as possible

Now the important question of this is WHEN Luka learns the truth. What time would Marinette have been most willing to tell Luka her secret?

Now I am going to say this, Marinette would absolutely NOT be willing to tell Luka the truth After the akuma attack.

For 1. it would just remind her that she would be putting not only her own identity, but Luka's safety in danger. Hawkmoth already knows Luka was picked to be Viperion, and Marinette would probably think Hawkmoth would eventually try to utilize previous chosen into his plans (example, Chloé)

For 2, Who would want to talk about their secret when it was the very reason he got akumatized? It sends a bad message to kids. It is saying, "Hey kids, THROW A TANTRUM and you can get WHATEVER you want."

So if Marinette was gonna do this, My bet would be that it would be After the band rehearsal.

So lets get to it.

_____________________________________________________________

-Luka is understandably annoyed with Marinette's constant no-shows or late appearances. He is doing his best to be patient but he wants to know the reason.

-Luka can feel this familiar cycle of wanting to know about his father, but his mom dismissing it. The constant hiding of the truth. He didn't want this to happen with Marinette as well.

-Marinette of course was going to say she couldn't tell him the truth... but before she said it, she could see it, the desperation in his eyes. He wanted to understand, he was willing to be accommodating, he just wanted the truth from her.

-Maybe it was the stress of being guardian, or the pressure of wanting this to work out, to keep SOMETHING normal in her life. But she caved.

-"Its really dangerous if you know..." Marinette whispered.

-Luka could see that she wanted to tell him.

-"Whatever it is... I swear I will understand. Whatever I need to do, I will do it."

-Marinette could see there was no lying. He was 100% ready.

-She noticed her Kwami look at her, trying to tell her 'NOT to do this'.

-"Im ladybug"

-Luka blinks.

-It was a lot to process... he backs away for a second.

-Suddenly a lot of things began clicking. The secrecy, the danger, the sudden disappearances.

-"You... you don't believe me do you?" Marinette asked.

-"I... I believe you. I am just processing. Its a lot to take in."

-He calms down of course. He assures her that he can handle this.

-"In fact, finding out your a hero isn't a stretch, You were always amazing."

-Marinette felt such relief. She had been carrying this secret for a while and to tell someone she trusted was a relief. She would admit that she did feel some guilt, Chat noir would probably be a bit mad not knowing who she was... but considering she knew about Chat blanc, its best he didn't know right now.

-And they kiss under the bridge.

-Later that night, Luka felt relief, he was so glad to know the truth for once. He knew Marinette was being honest. Though this did spark something in Luka. His mother had dismissed his questions about who his father was... maybe now he would finally get an answer. He just needed to push.

-Luka asked his mother over dinner who his father was?

-Juleka told Luka that this was not a good question, (since she knew how this conversation ALWAYS went down.)

-Anarke dismissed it like before, calling the guy a good-for-nothing deadbeat that 'Loved his guitar more then her."

-Luka pushed a bit more than usual. Saying he understood that she wants to protect them, but he thinks that he and Juleka are old enough to know.

-Anarke tells him that its better he doesn't know.

-Luka would have normally just left and gone to the bridge to calm down. But not this time, he felt what it was like to be trusted, and he pushed even harder.

-This sparked into an argument. Anarke telling him he is better off not knowing. Luka's patience ran out.

-Juleka had never seen Luka this angry before, it was a shock.

-He yelled, something Luka never did. But this... this made his long fuse finally burn through.

-Over 15 years of secrecy. His own girlfriend was more forthcoming than his own mother! And his girlfriend is a superheroine?! Someone whose privacy matters! It was infuriating!

-And Shadowmoth saw an opening.

-An amok and an akuma began to make their way to the angry teen

-Luka stormed out of the houseboat. He went to the bridge to calm down. But he was steaming.

-The calm underpass now only reminded him that there were others more forthcoming than his mother.

-And the akuma and amok struck.

-Luka resisted of course. He realized the danger of this situation. But those years of suppressed rage had burst through the dam and he couldn't stop it.

-'Im sorry Marinette..."

-And like with all things, The Truth always comes out. Also Pharo too.

[phantomphangphucker]

INVISOBANG - Ectoplasmic Educational Employment (Quirky Danny Fenton The Teacher? More Likely Than You Think!)

And the stellar artists that made art for this little fic o’ mine!: 

lanaecomics: ART CHECK IT OUT

AND

Trash Shipper; ART CHECK IT OUT

---

Danny isn’t exactly a fresh graduate with a lot of options after Highschool. College wasn’t happening and where the Hell was going to hire him? Mr. Lancer and CasperHigh apparently. As what? As a teacher. A teacher on the subject of ghosts, because of course everything in Danny’s life will be ghost-related. But maybe ghosts, ghost society at large, and even the goddamn Observants will actually think this is, like, a good? thing. He also, apparently, doesn’t suck at it. He’s still weird, eccentric, partly dead, and goddamn eighteen though

Prologue: Employing The Unemployable

Danny never really expected to graduate, honest to goodness he did not, yet his chronically-tardy-randomly-disappearing-handing-shit-in-late-or-never ass has managed to get that stupid slip of paper that was nearly basic necessity to get any halfway decent job; which was, frankly, a load of horse crap. Half the shit school taught was useless and most of it he wasn’t going to remember in three days none the less a year from now; or however long it took to find a job that actually required said useless knowledge. Though really? that wasn’t something he actually had to worry about, seeing as there was basically a zero percent chance of him having anything close to something even resembling a ‘normal’ job.

He could work for his folks? Financially lucrative and everything regarding the subject of ghosts has been effectively beaten into his brain by this point. Whether it was due to being around it so often or to save his own hide from his folks' inventions. He could also arguably get a shady as shit job, he was definitely skilled at lying, hiding, sneaking around, playing a role, even stealing and fighting. Plus a subordinate who can shoot energy beams and turn invisible would probably be a mob bosses, or whatever’s, wet dream. But, uh, that was probably not the best idea in the world; especially when Amity didn’t even have mobs and drugs and shit really. And why would they? They had freaking ghosts. Also having hallucinogenics would just be fucking overkill at this point. Plus Vlad already filled the quota for ‘dangerous men in dark suits that smoke cigars and drink whiskey while planning peoples demise or manipulating them like chess pieces".

Getting a job at the Nasty Burger would be easy enough but he’d get fired so fast. Ditto for working at the town’s only hotel or the gas stations or the grocery store or literally anywhere else minimum wage. Honestly, how the fuck do any of those fictional movie heroes have non-heroing related jobs? Excluding the super-rich ones with public identities anyways. Unrealistic. Completely unrealistic.

Sighing and flopping down on his bed, at least his friends didn’t have this issue. Manson’s don’t work and Tuck’s dumbass has hacked every single security and tech company in at least their entire state so they were basically all scrambling to hire his hacker ass. Val has the Nasty Burger -not that she’d be staying there once she graduated- and not to mention having Vlad’s very very deep pockets at her disposal. Speaking of Val though... Danny chuckles up at the ceiling, “honestly it’s funny as Hell that Val got held back but I didn’t. I mean really? How the fuck did that happen?”, shaking his head and laughing quietly a little more. The rest of the Defect Quartet got a good laugh out of that. Sam and Tuck were never at risk of not graduating, it was just Val and his ass that was a worry. Eh whatever. At least Dash’s dumbass got held back too; not seeing that jocks blonde mug at graduation was goddamn euphoric. It truly, truly was.

Well for now, all Danny can really do is wait, enjoy not having to wake up at the ass crack of dawn to go to school, and hope his folks don’t start go getting on his ass to get work that’s ‘normal’ so he has the experience. To be fair, him knowing what it’s like to work at a normal job would normally be a damn good idea, if he wasn’t a literal superhero who also just so happens to be kinda dead. Dead people shouldn’t have to work in his opinion, but life and deaths not fair so whatever. At least his poor abused bed was soft as shit though, that was something.

Danny nearly jumps out of his skin when his mom knocks on the door, jerking him out of his thoughts, “sweetie! It’s Mr. Lancer! He wants to talk to you!”. Oh Ancients fuck, why? Hopefully, graduation comes with a no tack backsies rule or something because that would be just his luck. Danny swings up his legs and gets up off his bed, mildly shouting, “coming!”. Popping open his door while his mom gives him a seriously judgemental ‘you better not have done something stupid’ raised eyebrow as she hands him the phone; him smiling sheepishly as he takes the phone and re-closes his bedroom door.

Eyeballing the phone with just a mild amount of apprehension before putting it to his ear, “yeah? What’s up, Lance?”.

“Hello Daniel, how’s life as a graduate treating you?”.

Danny chuckles, “that depends on whether or not you’re about to tell me I didn't actually graduate and some kind of wild and unlikely mistake popped up”.

Lancer actually laughs lightly at that, “no nothing like that, you graduated fairly, Daniel. Though considering your poor attendance I’m not surprised you’d be suspicious”. Danny grins to himself a little at that but fuck, not his fault man. Not his fault... Technically. “I was actually wondering how job searching is treating you. Working for your parents seems... less than safe even if that seems like the obvious choice for you”.

Danny nods to himself and chuckles, too true there. Smirking a little, “oh if anyone knows how dangerous FentonWorks is, it’s me”. Sometimes he’s honestly amazed no one’s ever called CPS on him or anything. FentonWorks was a death trap waiting to happen, literally; him being walking proof and all that. Shrugging to himself, “and you know I’m not exactly suited for a nine to five, Lance”, and he’s not even going to mention the fact that Vlad would hire him in a heartbeat because that is so not happening no matter how ‘good-ish’ the man was nowadays. Working for him would be a dangerous game no matter how Danny looked at it; for both of them.

“I don’t think I could even imagine you working an office job or as a cashier. But if not nine to five, then how about noon to three?”.

Danny blinks at that, huh? “um what?”, shaking his head a little and blinking again, “short shift there but you know me, how often did I ever stay in class for the full forty minutes, or whatever?”.

“Fifty-five, Daniel, And I’m sure you could stay for an hour given the right encouragement and approach”.

Danny sighs and tilts his head back, “I don’t need money that badly, man, geez”, shaking his head, “what are you even suggesting though?”. Is Lancer seriously offering him a job? Where even? Short as shit hours though, which technically worked well-ish for him. He never has a consistent time slot where no ghosts show up though.

“Well I’m sure your parents have heard about the ecto-ology class the school board decided to pass”, Lancer grumbling seemingly to himself, “long time coming if you ask me, too long”, speaking up a bit, “your class should have had it, not that you needed it”.

Danny snorts, fair point there, “yeah I could probably have taught it better than the damn teacher”, blinking, wait a fucking minute, “Lancer what the fuck. Are you asking me to teach it???”. What the actual shit. Sure, he could do it, technically, but still. The fuck, shaking his head, “don’t you, you know, need schooling to be a teacher? And come on, I am the exact opposite of teacher material, or whatever”. Seriously, the Hell. The Ancients are probably actively mocking him right now. That or Danny’s totally wrong and making a complete ass of himself.

“You’re irresponsible and... eccentric, yes, but you’re intelligent and excitable about your interests; and really, a teacher is someone who’s hyper interested and passionate about their field of education”, Danny can almost hear a smirk in Lancer’s voice, “don’t even try to tell me you’re not passionate about ecto-ology, I’ve overheard more than enough conversations between you and your friends to know otherwise. Though yes, the number of times I’ve heard you mention ghost jail was more than a little concerning. Especially when it sounded like it was personal on-the-inside experience”.

Danny blinks, “Lance, you frighten me. Now I’m seriously wondering even more why the school never called on my folks, or whatever”. This just in, apparently a vice principal was perfectly willing to just ignore a student going to jail in an alternate dimension. Repeatedly.

“As if that would actually help. Your parents are good, if crazy and negligent, people. And I have a feeling you’re perfectly capable of getting into trouble without their involvement. So what do you say? It’s completely within my power to hire you on the spot”.

Danny pulls the phone away from his cheek and makes wild hand gestures at it, again what the fuck. Though yeah, his folks aren’t half bad, excluding the whole ectophobia thing. Scrunching up his face at his phone before returning it to his cheek, “uh thanks? You know, for not getting my folks in shit”, shaking his head and smirking a little, “so you know a lot of the trouble is just me being me and you’re inviting me to once again spend five days a week at one of the local ghost hotspots? Do you like suffering, Lance?”.

That actually gets a laugh out of the vice-principal, “the ghosts certainly keep things interesting but no, hiring you instead of your parents would reduce the chaos. Your parents are far bigger trouble makers than you ever have been”.

“That feels like a challenge”. Danny absolutely smirks to himself over the sigh that comment gets him before continuing, “though yeah, my dad plus the school five days a week sounds like you’d be actively begging the universe to blow up the entire place while simultaneously covering it in green goo and maybe accidentally teleporting it to an alternate dimension. To be fair, dad’s only managed that twice on the house so far”. And his mom still won’t let the man live down either event, understandable. Sighing, his parents being walking collateral damage machines was useful in school since it kept nearly every teacher from calling them in, but now it was mildly biting him in the ass. Though now that he’s thinking about... who else could the school call in? Val was still in school and the school didn’t officially know about her ‘extracurricular activities’ -though Danny would bet an entire model rocket that most of the teachers knew or at least had a very very good guess- so she was out. Then there was the G.I.W. which... just no. Fuck no. Super bad idea. So that just left his ass, and fine, arguably it would be a decent enough job and Lancer wasn’t exactly wrong about Danny knowing his shit and being a bit excitable about ghosts. He couldn’t help it alright? He was raised on it and actually excelled at it. Plus, he was a ghost; knowing was survival. Plus plus, having someone who isn’t ectophobic teach the ghost class would probably be a good idea. Val was better but... she tried to use the Box Ghost’s face as a battering ram because her closet door got stuck last week, ‘nough said. Sighing again, “okay fine, I think you’re inviting disaster but all your other options would also do that”.

Lancer laughs lightly and sips something, probably tea knowing the man, “agreed. So you’ve got the summer to come up with a curriculum, nothing too serious for the first semester so I’m sure you can handle it”. Danny scowls audibly, though fine how much harder could making a teaching thingy be than overthrowing corrupt ghost government/royals? Fuck him entirely. “Don’t worry, I’ll send over some useful tips and tricks, a little guide; because you are right, typically teachers go to school to learn how to teach”.

Danny gives one very sarcastic and deadpanned, “you don’t say”, in response to that. Great, now he’s got homework over summer, just really weird homework that’ll technically include creating homework for other people. Weeee. Fun. Ugh. But hey, maybe this’ll actually not suck. Shaking his head and chuckling a little, “you know, I’m starting to think you might actually like me, Lance”.

Lancer simply laughs faintly at that. “How about we meet up sometime next week and I’ll see how far you’ve gotten and your ideas”.

Danny leans his head back, “ugh fine”, grumbling to himself, “oh Ancients I’m ‘hanging out’ with my old teacher, fuck me”, and hangs up though more than a little sure that Lancer probably heard that last bit.

Danny rubs his eyes in circles after a bit, sighing again, and picks up his cellphone.

thealiveone: guess who got a job offer first? Suck it tuck

PDAxpda : bullshit, where????

thealiveone: lets just say that lance decided I needed to see things from my poor teachers persepectives

PDAxpda: oh god XD poor casperhigh

Nightshade: So youre becoming part of the ststem? Really Danny?

Nightshade: but with fhosts

PDAxpda: ha! You’re becoming your parents!

thealiveone: HEY! AM NOT!

thealiveone: ...kinda

thealiveone: but hey, ghost teachin bout ghoss. Love the irony

Nightshade: 🙄

thealiveone: ancients be happy for a guy why dontcha geez

thealiveone: even if it’s stupid

thealiveone: and I’ll totally wind up having to ditch and be late and shit

PDAxpda: typical you

thealiveone: 😢

Nightshade: fine but at least be a quirky ‘teacher’ and not some lame rule follower ass

thealiveone: me? Not be quirky? Fuckin riiiiiiiight

PDAxpda: *snort*

thealiveone: anywhay

thealiveone: think I should do a bit on ghost hunger just to make lance regret his chocoes?

Nightshade: 🤦🏻‍♀️

PDAxpda: YES!!!

thealiveone: 😏

Danny had ideas now, and he was about to make them EVERYBODY'S PROBLEM. As he should.

Chapter 2: Cursed From Entry Level

Today was the day, yup it certainly was; Danny side-eyes his ghost-shaped alarm clock. The first Monday of a new school year; which normally shouldn’t mean shit to him since he graduated and all that but fuck his dumbass agreed to turn around and come right back as a goddamn teacher. Why did he do that? That was stupid. Well not really but now that it’s a little past eleven and he has to actually get up, get dressed, and go do the thing that he agreed to do. Fuck. Responsibilities suck. And if anyone’s allowed to say that it’s him, superhero responsibilities kinda outclass all others so suck it. Sighing and flopping an arm over his eyes, had he been smart and bought teacher clothes? No. Or prepared an introduction speech thingy? Also no. Or even bothered to tell literally anyone other than his friends and family that he now worked at CasperHigh? Definitely no, let the fuckers be surprised. He had, however, printed out copies of the syllabus; which fine, was largely because Lancer nagged him about it so much that he did it out of spite. Danny bets being manipulative was totally something taught in teacher school; not that Danny really particularly needed to be taught that… especially when he could just go to Vlad for that kind of ‘tutoring’, not that he actually would. Regardless, he now officially had to get up.

Sighing very loudly into his arm before moving to push himself up and walk over to his closet; did any of his shit qualify as ‘professional’? Haha fuck no. But oh well, screw it. Might as well lean into this ghost teacher thing and the ’Fenton’s are eccentric weirdos’ thing. Time for a ‘I Got A Boo Boo On My Funny Bone Isn’t That Very Humerus?’ sweater and some crust punk pants that are more patches than fabric. He is so not wearing a tie or bow tie though, bandana? Shrugging he nabs up a little alien one that had only a couple small ectoplasm stains, “if anyone asks, lab accident”, and smirks to himself while tying the thing around his neck, shrugging, then heading downstairs for breakfast.

His dad looks up and grins, waving a hand while the other’s still tinkering away on some gun, “morning Danno! Heading off to school?”, tilting his head and chuckling heartily, “or to teach, I should say!”.

Danny rolls his eyes but smiles and chuckles, moving to grab out the cereal, “yup, bet it’s gonna be interesting. My poor fellow teachers”, Danny absolutely smirks at that, because damn they’re gonna hate Lancer for a while once they realise they’re stuck with him for who knows how long. Sure he’ll only be actually there for, like, what an hour or two or so? Eh something like that. He honestly hopes Lancer didn’t tell all the teachers because he absolutely wants to see all of them look at him, do a double-take, and sigh in resigned defeat and pain. Danny can’t help snickering a bit to himself as he eats his food and his dad goes back to tinkering; though with a far bigger grin on his face.

Danny actually manages to get out the door just as his mom’s coming up from the lab, her waving at him erratically, “have a good day at work, sweetie!”, she sounds more than just a little excited to be saying ‘work’ in regards to him. Did make some sense, seeing as he didn’t exactly have any kind of real job opportunities. At least neither of them tried to insist on driving him there, letting him get in a good midday fly instead; one of these days they are seriously going to wonder how the heck he gets places so fast without driving.

-

Landing behind the school in his usual spot Danny takes a few steps back and just kinda stares up at the building for a hot minute, “I don’t know whether this feels nostalgic, daunting, or just surreal”, shaking his head, “well I guess I just better get to it, everyone should be in class right now... right?”, tilting his head as he turns invisible and intangible, stepping through the wall, “how the fuck have I already forgotten the schedule? Ancients”. Thankfully there is, in fact, not a single person and/or spirit in the hallway. He even effectively avoids everyone on his way to the teachers' lounge and successfully uses the key Lancer gave him to get in. Of course, it’s not empty inside though, expected honestly.

Danny pokes his head in and immediately spots Mr. CampBell and grins wickedly, “heeeey”; and the teacher damn near jumps out of his skin before snapping his head around to the door. Mr. CampBell visually recoils, “oh god why are you here?”.

Score! Lancer absolutely did not tell the staff. Danny snickering as he waltzes in, “oh don’t you know? Lancer hired me”. Mr. CampBell turns away and sighs very loudly, Danny absolutely hearing the whispered, “why? I thought William actually liked his coworkers”. Danny only snickers meanly as Lancer walks out from around one of the corners, “we needed an ecto-ology teacher, he’s a perfectly reasonable choice, Joseph”. Huh, so that’s CampBell’s first name. Lancer then turning to Danny and handing him off a coffee cup, gesturing to the corner he just walked out around, “there’s more in the kitchen, since I’m well aware you practically live on the stuff”.

Danny blinks, grins, and moans comically, “oh my Ancients, there’s free coffee in here”.

Lancer quirks an eyebrow faintly at that, “I did tell you”.

Danny shrugs, “eh I thought you were just trying to sweeten the deal for me, Lance”, then taking a sip, “pretty weak shit though”. Lancer quirks his eyebrow further, “it’s free, Daniel”. Danny rolls his eyes, “yeah well, I think I’ll bring in some Deathwish”.

Joseph gives him one very concerned look, “is that an official real coffee or something your crazy parents made?”, he sounds more than a little hesitant for the answer there. Good. Danny smirks, “oh it’s real, and lives up to the name, drinking the cold brew might actually kill you from botulism. The regular coffee is only the world’s strongest stuff though”, then finger-gunning at the man.

Lancer shakes his head as he sits down on the couch, “you concern me some days”, pursing his lips, “most days”, then sips at his coffee. Joseph shakes his head, “I’m just going to head to my classroom”, pointing at Lancer, “you keep that demon child’s classroom consistent, I do not want that ectoplasm stuff getting mixed with Charles’s science nerd stuff”, and throws Danny a scowl before leaving.

Lancer shakes his head before looking to Danny, “your classroom is going to be consistent though, considering I know exactly how often your homework had to be put in biohazard instead of the filing cabinets”. Danny rubs his neck a bit sheepishly at that while Lancer leans forwards, arms on his knees, “do you have everything ready? I could sit in on your first few classes if you’d like”.

Danny snorts, “somehow I think that would just get me mocked, Lance”, smirking, “but that depends on how much you want to leave me unsupervised with a bunch of teens and ectoplasmic substances”.

“You’re... not bringing out ectoplasm on the first day, are you?”.

Danny snickers, “maybe...”. Lancer sighs very loudly but Danny decides to take some amount of pity on the man, “mostly I brought ecto-proofing stuff since I don’t think you want to be replacing stuff a bajillion times. Anyway, can I paint the whiteboard ectophobic green? I mean the ectophobic bit laterally”. Lancer only sighs louder but does nod while putting his face in his hand. Smart man. Danny should probably just go ahead and do that immediately though, the walls and desks and stuff can happen later or fuck he can just make it an assignment because why the fuck not?!? Danny downing the rest of the coffee, clapping his legs, and getting up, “whelp I’mma go do that then”. Lancer speaking up just before he gets to the door, “I will be checking in on you, but feel free to call or ‘text away’ if you need anything”. Danny cringes a little but nods.

Are the hallways empty this time? Nope. Does Danny’s mere presence cause a bunch of whispering as he’s heading to his assigned classroom? Absolutely. Everyone knew who the Fenton’s were, he himself might have techically been a ‘loser weirdo’ but he was also simultaneously popular in the infamous kinda way, especially at school. Most of the comments -that his wonderful ghostly hearing let’s him pick up on easily- are along the lines of ‘guess he didn’t graduate, no surprise there’ or ‘why the fuck’s he here?’, some of the freshmen react with mock horror though so that’s amusing. When Danny gets to his designated room he absolutely spends his before class time painting the board and just throws the rest of his stuff on the provided desk. He is not a tidy person and that is so not gonna change.

He was, however, so not prepared for Val to walk through the door first though. Her and Danny making eye contact, Danny blinking, “‘kay why the fuck would you be here?”. She gives him a dumb look, “hey you yourself, Danny”, then scrunches up her face and sags, “oh my Zone, you are seriously the teacher? You were serious about that? We’re all gonna die”. Danny just smirks while she slumps down in a desk, him scribbling his name on the board quickly; Ancients if anyone calls him ‘Mr. Fenton’ he’ll gag. Speaking of gagging though, putting his class right after lunch was probably not the smartest move on the principal's part. Gives him the perfect excuse to do something weird and just eat ectoplasm or something.

Valerie bangs her head on the desk before looking back up to him, putting her chin in a palm, “though I guess I am kinda curious what the heck you’ll teach with this, you’re always so tightlipped about ghost stuff”.

Danny chuckles and shakes his head a little, glancing back to her before turning around to sit down in his provided chair, not nearly enough burn holes yet to actually feel like his though. He’ll have to fix that, “with you. We don’t exactly see eye to eye on things”. She scoffs at that and rolls her eyes, but other fellow teens are coming in so she doesn’t give him any kind of actual response.

Every single teen does at least a slight pause at seeing Danny in the teacher's chair before taking seats. some say nothing, some swear lightly, others groan, and then there’s goddamn Dash??? Why was that jock taking this class? Better yet, why did it have to be Danny’s luck that Dash would even want to.

“Well if it isn’t Fenturd”. At least half the class snickers or coughs to cover laughs.

Danny glares at the jock, “I can give detentions now, don’t be stupid”, smirking, “or I can just designate you as the ‘helping hand’ and you can handle all the ectoplasmic shit I am absolutely going to bring in”. Dash takes his seat real quick after that while Val’s busy snickering at his expense.

Danny leans back in his chair as the bell goes off, “whelp, guess this is happening now”. Valerie puts her head down and laughs a little, a couple other teens laughing a little themselves while Danny continues, “okay, so obviously I’m the teacher, which honestly? more than a few of you should have seen that one coming”, nodding to himself, “now in case you somehow do not know who I am and also somehow missed Dash being an ass and calling me ‘Fenturd’, I’m Danny Fenton the youngest Fenton, and yeah I’m your teacher because literally no one else is remotely qualified or safe enough to do this”.

More than a few people mutter ‘that's fair’ or something similar. His folks being walking talking time bombs wasn’t exactly a secret and the G.I.W. were honestly more dangerous than the ghosts.

Danny chuckles to himself, digs in his backpack and gets up, “and also, in case you didn’t even bother to look at the class you agreed to take or what was written on the class schedule thingy”, Danny cups the little semi-solid ball of ectoplasm and slaps it on the whiteboard, it spattering across neon green and glowing, “welcome to Ecto-ology! And that!-”, pointing at the green splattered board, “-that’s ectoplasm!”, then shaking a jar of SignalShines -little tiny firefly-like blob ghosts- on the little tray attached to the whiteboard typically used for the markers, “and that’s some ghosts! Some very tiny ghosts”.

Valerie snorts and laughs, muttering, “oh no”, into her hand. Since she obviously figured out that Danny wasn’t going to even attempt at being a ‘normal fucking teacher’. Most of the class snickers and starts laughing after a bit, that or eyeballing the ectoplasm splatter/ghost-filled jar. Danny waving the board and everything off limply, “I ecto-proofed the whiteboard already so don’t bother calling the ecto-hazard line”, then making a point to sound ominous and mildly threatening, “they won’t come”. Which absolutely gets him more laughs and a couple shivers, seeing as he could actually legit pull off scary if he felt like it. Perks of being a ghost and ridiculously highly combative and confrontational.

Danny absolutely hands the syllabus paper stack to Dash to hand out, largely as payback for the name-calling. “So since this year this class is only an optional elective, being a trial run and all that, lets do the whole introduce-yourselves-even-though-I-already-know-who-you-all-are thing with why you took this class and, for funsies, who’s your favourite ghost”. Dash does give him a dirty look, which Danny smirks over, but what follows is people saying their names and giving reasons and shit.

Danny decides to smear around the whiteboard ectoplasm to write down ghost names and tally up how many people say that ghost. Is it mostly Phantom? Yes; even Val votes for him but that’s understandable since she actually got along with Phantom, for the most part, these days. Somehow the Box Ghost earns the second most tallies, Ember’s in third not all that surprising, and two people actually threw a vote Johnny’s way. As for why people took the class?

Well Valerie claims she wants to know more about ghosts and leaves it at that, earning some eye-rolls from the class seeing as everyone knew how she felt about the spookies. Dash took it because a Fenton was teaching, which is information Danny doesn’t know what to do with; what the fuck does that mean? And everyone else? To learn about ghosts (sure), for self-defence (good reason actually. Practical), better than the other electives (fair and probably accurate), easy grade (or so they think... maybe), because it absolutely was going to be chaotic (hundred percent yes). Danny’s content and smirking just a little bit.

Danny sits on the corner of his desk -why not?- and waves a hand around limply, “alright, semi-proper introduction of myself. I’m sure pretty much all of you are damn well aware of FentonWorks and it being basically the only ecto-tech company -besides the ever overpriced Dalvco- and that it is responsible for all the shields and ecto-weapons and all that jazz in town. Surprise surprise, I’ve worked on or outright built a lot of that stuff”, sounding incredibly sarcastic, “truly shocking, I know”, earning him a couple snickers/laughs. “Now you might think that since my folks literally invented the stuff and are some of the only published scientists in the field of ecto-ology that they’re more qualified to do this teacher thing, ignoring the fact that they would probably blow the classroom up or accidentally get everyone teleported into the ghost Zone randomly”, pointing at the class, “not an exaggeration”, before continuing properly, “but guess what? They've never actually explored the Zone or sat down and actually talked to a ghost”, putting a hand to his chest, “I, however, have. So yeah, qualified”; and snaps his fingers a bit dramatically.

James mutters, “not sure that actually means qualified”; and he’s not the only one. Expected, seeing as Danny was not actually qualified to be a teacher obviously.

Danny sticks up a finger, “I have no teacher qualifications though, but Lance decided he just does not care”, getting up and walking to the board, moving around the ectoplasm, “and as for my fav ghostie, you’ve never heard of them”, and scrawls out ‘ClockWork’ on the list of favourite ghosts. Turning back to the class, “ClockWork’s existence is mildly forbidden knowledge, so have fun with-”, Haley shrieking interrupts and most of the class going wide-eyed gets him to turn around and see the very well done drawing of ClockWork looking right at Danny with a glare, there is an ‘I’m flattered, Daniel’ written under it though so... Danny can’t help but bend over wheezing a little, “oh I so saw that coming!”, shaking his head and chuckling, “or something similar at least”. Okay he expected to get smacked over the head with an invisible staff out of nowhere, not a passive-aggressive yet still somehow fond drawing. Straightening up and turning back to the class while whipping at his eye, “y’all signed up for this, remember that”.

Danny sits down and starts going over the syllabus, because that’s what he’s supposed to do, but Jesse interrupts him halfway through, “are we just ignoring everything that just happened with the magic drawing?”. Danny looking at him and smirking, “a good rule of thumb in life is when the literal god of time chastises you, you move on immediately. Just good life advice if you want to keep doing the whole living thing”. Expectedly that gets him a lot of staring. Danny rolls his wrist around, “that Vortex ghost is also a god by the by. Same with UnderGrowth. Pandora’s a minor god technically”, tilting his head, “then there’s the whole mess of Pariah who’s pretty much just a way worse version of Hades”, smirking, “Amity’s seen some big names in the ghost world”.

“What the fuck”.

Danny just snickers at that while Valerie puts her head in her hands and shakes it.

Surprisingly the rest of the class is seemingly going normally, Lancer did stick his head in and eyeball the whiteboard which Danny gave him a ‘what did you expect from me? Honestly’ smirk for, and surprisingly no one decided to ask Danny how the actual fuck he knew the time god if they even believed him on that anyway. But maybe five minutes before class is over, Danny’s ghost sense goes off, because of fucking course, but it just feels like Boxy. So Danny, smirking, checks his phone to use as some kind of excuse for how he knows the Box Ghost’s here, gets up and goes to the window, opening it up, sticking his head out, and shouting, “HEY BOXY!”. That, of course, gets the ghost's attention immediately, who does his scary fingers thing, “YOU DARE DRAW THE ATTENTION OF THE MOST FEARSOME GHOST IN EXISTENCE! THE BOX GHOST!”. Danny just rolls his eyes, points towards the whiteboard in the classroom and shouts back, “WE DID A POLL! YOU'RE THE SECOND MOST FAVOURITE GHOST!”. The Box Ghost stares at him for a bit, goes a little wide-eyed, floats towards the ground, and starts crying. Danny pulls his head back in while cackling, looking back to the class, “congrats, we’ve just made the Box Ghost cry”; which absolutely makes everyone start laughing as the bell goes off. Danny smirking more, “I feel very accomplished with myself”.

Surprisingly most of his freaking students actually wave him goodbye, which is weird as heck but also kinda cool, Dash just scowls at him though; get fucked dick-weed. Val stays behind a bit, expected, and sits on the corner of his desk, “so this is really happening, huh?”.

“Yup. Guess so”, leaning back in his chair a little, “you gonna turn this into a debate club or?”, chuckling, “though I doubt you’ll actually learn a whole lot”. She nods at that, “I could probably teach this myself”, grumbling, “if I wasn’t still stuck as a student”, sighing, “I’m not gonna argue in class though, I know you’re ghost friendly, Danny, that’s gonna show obviously”, shrugging and smirking a little, “I just might need a little bit more proof before I take your word on something”.

“Just for that I’m going to bring in Cujo next class”.

“You wouldn’t”.

Danny smirks, “try me. He’ll really liven up the lesson on classifications of ghost types. Truly he is one of the best examples of an animal ghost”. She sounds downright offended, “then bring in a freaking ectopuss! Not the life-ruining dog!”.

“But everyone loves dogs, Val”, Danny smirks, “besides, ectopusses aren’t proper animal ghosts, they’re a type of blob ghost”. She grumbles a bit incoherently before muttering, “dick”, and leaving for her next class; leaving Danny chuckling.

(And Valerie absolutely spent the next day’s class glaring bloody murder at a tiny green puppy, inspiring slight fear and concern in her classmates; Danny just looked progressively more smug which only made his students more concerned).

-

Before Danny actually managed to leave the school, since he didn’t actually have to be there outside of his one class though something tells him that if the ecto-ology trial run works out then he’ll be stuck ‘teaching’ it two or three times a day. Ugh but also so much potential chaos. Anyway, Lancer catches up to him, sounding just slightly out of breath, “your first teaching experience go well, Daniel?”.

Danny smirks, “brought a ghost to tears, only made one mild ecto-hazard, and possibly annoyed a few thousand ghost cops; so good day actually”. Lancer stares at him a little, “should I be concerned”. Reasonable question.

“Maybe”, Danny chuckles, “to be fair, me teaching people about ghosts was absolutely going to piss off the eyeballs, said eyeballs are some ghost cops, it’s complicated”, chuckling a little though sounding/being a bit serious, “technically I really am the best choice for this, I know more than my folks or the G.I.W. do by miles”, smiling softly and a bit pitying a little, “and I know somethings that the living aren’t exactly supposed to”.

Lancer eyes him and shakes his head slightly, “I know, Daniel. I know”. Danny absolutely quirks an eyebrow at that because what the Hell does Lancer mean by that? So he just gives a simple, “oh?”, for a response; weak as shit but it’ll have to do. Lancer nods, “I’m not as oblivious as I let the students think, so yes I know. Though try to keep your, ghost activities let’s say, outside of the classroom? Don’t bring students into your spat with ghost cops”.

Danny actually coughs, again what the fuck. Shaking his head a little bug-eyed, “again, you scare me, Lance”, shaking his head again, “though no, their problem with me is the fact that I exist, so”, and shrugs; Danny is still a little goddamn thrown here. Lancer sighs, “I guess I should have expected that. And I’ll admit to having some questions about that, but-”, putting a hand on Danny’s shoulder, “-I don’t truly need an answer there”. Danny, for a lack of knowing what else to do, finger guns; Lancer looks less than impressed.

Chapter 3: Ghosts In The Know

It takes a total of three days for a ghost to actually show up during Danny’s designated class time -the Box Ghost and ClockWork’s sudden appearances don’t count- and while Danny’s fairly certain Lancer at least has some kind of guess about the whole Phantom thing Danny’s not going to just go ghost in goddamn class; that would have been dumb when he was a student and it would only be dumber to do as a freaking teacher. At least as a student he didn’t have a class worth of people somewhat staring at him. But hey at least he had just been facing the whiteboard when his breath decided to be all icy fog, that was something; him watching it frost up the board for a couple of seconds and attempting to verbally steamroll right over the random sudden pause in his speaking. He also absolutely can hear Val’s scanner do its little proximity warning beep.

“-but we’re not talking about Cores today even if that’s unique to proper ghosts, so not getting into that right now”. Turning around and putting down the marker, seeing as he can’t exactly just let Skulker go running around. “Now I’ll be right back”, he almost says ‘bathroom’ but as a teacher he doesn’t need to do that shit anymore, he doesn’t have to justify himself to fucking nobody. But just before he gets to the door he points at Val, who’s mouth is slightly open and is definitely absolutely about to ask if she can go, so he smirks, “and no. You can’t”. She looks so confused and a bit freaked out that he can’t help laughing. He does catch James mutter, “did he just pull his bathroom thing? Seriously?”; which just makes Danny laugh to himself even more as he ducks off around a corner to transform.

He doesn’t have to go very far seeing as Skulker was practically directly outside of the area where his classroom was, looking supremely confused and quirking a robotic eyebrow with his arms crossed at Danny, “really, whelp?”. Danny flips him off and shoots him one in the face pretty well immediately, which starts off their standard combat. Skulker shooting off a rocket with a snide and definitely meant to be insulting comment of, “never would have pegged you for teaching or for telling humans our secrets”.

Danny near shouting back with a snort, “secrets my ass! Shove a floppy disk in it!”. That very predictably gets him a more well-aimed rocket to the face.

-

Meanwhile, in the classroom, Jesse glances around, “should we even be surprised?”.

“No but since he’s, you know, the teacher, I’m pretty sure he shouldn’t be playing hooky or whatever”.

Valerie snorts, “oh as if Lancer didn’t know what he was getting into here. Besides Danny was never going to be a normal anything”. Dash smirks and laughs meanly, “no shit, damn freak”. Valerie absolutely throws an eraser at him for that.

“I’m more curious how he predicted Valerie pulling her own bathroom thing”.

“Obvious answer there, he does it so he knows it”.

“Damn, got a point”.

Valerie grumbles and crosses her arms, “and here I thought he’d be totally cool with that”. Emilie laughing, “yeah you’d think, especially if he was going to keep doing it”. Todd pushes himself to stand up with a smirk, “Well I vote we go through his desk, this is Danny after all”; more than a few people look curious, some look cautious though.

Valerie blinking, before smirking and laughing to herself, “yes, go right ahead, do that, see what happens”. That earns even more cautious looks. Valerie knew Danny, had been in his house and room, she knew exactly what kind of state those two places were in. His desk drawers were absolutely boobytrapped. Todd, however, doesn’t give a shit, and just shrugs while moving up to said desk.

Valerie isn’t even slightly surprised when a bunch of snakes-in-a-can pop out of the very first drawer Todd opens, they’re all green because of course they are. Todd mutters a slightly startled, “fuck”, and kicks one of the snakes.

“HA! Suck it, Todd”.

James shakes his head, eyeing the green fake snakes, “I have a feeling that everything in this class is going to be ghost-themed”. Valerie rolls her eyes, “obviously, have you somehow missed the ghost-themed clothing? Or the fact that Danny is, and has always been, a damn pun machine?”. Over half the class groans or chuckles. Valerie rolling her hand and leaning back, “pretty sure he was wearing a pair of Sam’s platforms today, the ones with little plastic green ghosts shaking around inside”. Dash mutters almost absently, “huh, so that’s why he seems taller today”.

“Dash... why are you noticing his freaking height”.

“Shut up, Jesse. I can’t physically shove him in lockers anymore but I sure as shit can imagine it”.

Valerie sighs very loudly at that, but at least Dash wasn’t quite stupid enough to try bullying a teacher. Even if that teacher was Danny and the same age as him. Which, talk about wild. She honestly did not believe Danny for a second when he said he would be teaching at CasperHigh and yet here he was. Teaching. It was definitely weird, but at least nothing had blown up yet. Hopefully Phantom went and dealt with Skulker though, she’d think Danny would be one who let people leave whenever, guess not. Her scowling a little over that. Todd opening up another drawer and a black and white ghost popping their head out jerks her right out of her head though. Todd falling on his ass and scrambling back, “holy shit! What the fuck!”.

James blinks and wheezes, standing up like basically everyone else, “Danny had a whole ass ghost in his desk, what?!?”. Said ghost floats up, looks around, and waves; while the entire class just stands there, many with ecto-pistols drawn at this point.

“I’m picking up a lot of hostility here, busters”.

Todd grumbles, “you have got to be shitting me”. The ghost tilts their head, “I don’t think Phantom would like that very much. Totally not tubular”. Valerie facepalms and lowers her small blaster, “you’re that old ghost that haunts one of Danny’s old lockers, aren’t you”. The ghost gives her a thumbs up, “that’s the dealio!”.

“... and why were you just in his desk drawer?”.

The ghost crosses their skinny arms and huffs, “when I picked up on the Ha-Danny being here again I had to make sure that buster wasn’t up to his bully ways again”. Dash actually burst out laughing and drops back into his seat at that, “Fenton?!? A bully?!? Man what are you smoking?!?”; which the ghost gives him a very strange look for.

“Poindexter, by the Ancients, how many times do I have to tell you that I wasn’t being a bully, I was getting back at one. Geez”. The entire class goes still and snaps their heads around to Danny, who’s just casually walking in. Dash muttering, “I knew that twerp was the one screwing with me”.

Poindexter rolls his eyes, “like I believe that, buster. Someone would have to be a real dummy to do that to you”. Danny very obviously glares at the ghost, “I said that Dash is a bully, not that he’s smart”. Dash scowls very audibly, “I’ll make you eat those words, Fentit”. Danny instantly holds up a pink detention slip and smirks, while Dash very obviously holds back shouting expletives at him. The ghost just looks confused. Danny turning to the ghost, having to look up a little as he takes his seat, “like I said, not smart”. Dash just scowls while Danny continues speaking but while looking at the class instead of the ghost, “so where were we?”.

Amber blinks, “are we just ignoring the ghost that popped out of your desk?”; while everyone starts sitting back down slowly.

Danny quirking an eyebrow at the ghost, “why, man?”. While Amber tosses up her hands and sits back down too.

“I was looking for anything suspicious. Never know with you”.

Emilie chuckles to herself, “I like how ghosts apparently find him as suspicious as people do”. Earning her a few nods.

Dash rolls his eyes, “oh like what, ghost-themed pencils? A change of underwear in case his own class scares him?”. Danny starting to hold up another pink slip shuts the jock up real quick. Poindexter looks genuinely surprised and turns to Danny, “hold the phone, you sayin’ that rumour that everyone thinks you’re afraid of ghosts is actually the real deal???”. Danny just sighs, “it was a very good and effective way out of my folks trying to make a hunter of me”. While practically half the class shouts, “THAT WAS FAKE!”, including one stunned Dash who had thought he was being so smart and cruel by taking full advantage of Danny’s ‘fear’.

Danny chuckles and looks around, “yup. Sorry not sorry”. Lancer picks that very moment to stick his head in, looking at the ghost then Danny, “Daniel...”.

Danny sighs and waves him off, “I know, it’s just Poindexter though. He’s here somewhere in the school almost every day and has been for, like, decades. Longer than I’ve been alive at least. He’s just seldom visible. Here’s his haunt”. Lancer sighs, “very well”, and just leaves; clearly not wanting to deal with all of that.

James blinks, “so, uh, is he going to stay or? And how the heck did you, but not the school, know about him?”. Poindexter huffs, crosses his arms, and seemingly vanishes; Danny, however, watches the transparent teen ghost just sort of float to the back of the class while making ‘I’ve got my eyes on you’ finger motions at Danny. Danny rolling his eyes while responding, “maybe, maybe not. And you know that locker that’s rumoured to be haunted that I was randomly assigned to for a while? Yeah that’s totally true. We’ll talk about lair cores later. There was also a mild body-swapping incident”.

“Excuse me?”.

Danny points at James, “I have been through some shit, man. Body swapping with a ghost was less weird and more annoying though”. The entire class just stares at him which he takes as a chance to get back to the lesson plan. “So as I was saying...”.

-

Valerie winds up approaching him after the bell, “you know one of these days I’m going to figure out what the Zone that nickname that ghosts have for you is”. Danny quirks an eyebrow, because of course Poindexter probably nearly called him ‘the halfa’ since that’s what Poindexter literally always called him. Smirking at her, “I don’t doubt that, Val. Just like someday you’ll be fully honest about your, ahem, extracurricular activities”, and chuckles while she rolls her eyes. Her muttering, “oh whatever. Anyway, wanna go to a movie after school or are you too busy with teacher duties”.

Danny huffs, “as if. I only do one class you know, so sure why not”. Lancer picks that moment to stick his head in again, “actually you need to finalise that first assignment, also you do realise that as a teacher you are supposed to watch your language?”.

Danny gives an awkward, “uuuuhhhhh”, before scrunching up his face in a pout, leaning back in his chair dramatically, and whining loudly while Val laughs at him, “do I haaaaavvvvveeee toooooo?”. Lancer’s sigh is a pained one.

(Danny absolutely starts out the next class with, “so one of you s̴͜͝h̴i̶t̡̨͡s snitched on me so prepare for some slight language changes, b͘͘itc͜͝he͢͝ş̛”. Which earned a mixture of confused looks, laughs, and a couple glares at Todd, Dash, and Brittney; who were the most likely suspects. And really no one was actually surprised in the slightest that Danny seemingly knew GhostSpeak, it just tracked honestly).

---

Was Danny looking forward to this first assignment thingy? Haha fuck no. He’s just going to assume marking is Hell but he already established that he wasn’t the kind of sick freak that makes the very first assignment the one required oral presentation or some shitty quiz; and fine he already put down ‘research assignment on an unusual ghost theory you have’ in the syllabus but what the actual crap was he supposed to do for the guild lines of this to avoid getting the kind of ridiculous shit that he himself would write. Because as funny as getting twenty-odd papers about Plasmius’s clear attempts at making up for his fragile masculinity or about Phantom’s fashion choices would be, Danny’d rather not. Well he could just be like: y’all can either do all your papers on Phantom or none, vote now. At least then he would either be prepared to read a bunch of wild shit about himself or go in knowing he won’t have to read any about himself.

Rolling over in bed and sighing, “well I guess I could just limited the second option to known frequently seen ghosts?”, blinking, “oh and none can be on Boxy because I see too much of that problem man as it is”. Speaking of problems, he also has to figure out how he’s going to spend an hour getting stared at by most of his students (fuck that was still super weird) sans an entire hand; because sure the rest of his arm will have reformed by noon, but the hand will still an issue. Too bad he didn’t manage to find the chopped-off limb before it dissipated into free-floating ectoplasm. While he does appreciate that no one’s going to just stumble across his severed limb, getting it back would have been way better. Eh fuck it, super long sleeves day it is, Jazz did attempt at dark humour once and gifted him a straightjacket so what the heck time to look like a crazy person the legit way.

Of course it’s currently three am so he is not getting dressed right now, not a chance.

-

Does he get to fall back asleep and actually stay asleep till eleven or so? No, when does he ever? Fuck ghosts and their lack of caring about his shitty sleep schedule. It’s now five am, his ghost sense has got him mostly shivering awake, and his blankets don’t even qualify as actually still on his bed. Him letting himself slump onto the floor while transforming and starting to float up in the air before only slightly lazily flying out his window. If anyone asks about his eye-bags, he bought them off the black market. Does that make sense? Not really no. Does he care? Also no.

Him floating up on Ember smashing up a street sign with her guitar, pinching his nose while otherwise hanging limply in the air, “Ember, why?”. He’s too tired for this shit, Ancients.

“Anarchy”. She hits the sign again.

Danny sighs, “well could you go be ‘anarchy’ when said anarchy doesn’t result in my sleep becoming anarchy too? I really don’t feel like having the R.E.M. sleep government centres of my brain overthrown today”. That actually gets her to pause and look up at him, smirking and snickering after a bit, “you do look like shit”, then very pointedly looking to his half reformed arm; hey at least he had a proper elbow again! Shove a dick in it, goddamn. He absolutely flips her off before shooting her guitar, “go home, Ember. I have class”.

She gives him a pitying look like an absolute ass, “oh did they not let you graduate from that indoctrinating soul-crushing suffering?”, then grinning almost manically, “let’s burn it down!”.

“Jesus Ancients no, I work there”.

“Oh so you’ve become a cog in the machine for the man”.

Danny sighs very loudly, “okay what capitalist crawled up your ass and died, fuck. And if anything my mere presence is causing chaos”, chuckling hollowly, “one of the other teachers drank my coffee accidentally and was absolutely losing their beans half the day. And only one person’s gotten a mild case of ecto-poisoning”, sighing, “Ancients, Todd’s a dumbass. I mean-”, gesturing vaguely with his intact hand, “-I knew that, but next time he wants to ‘prove he can bend steel’ with a bar of ectoplasm I’m just going to let him break his arm and get full-blown contamination”.

Ember shakes her head, “I say let him. And so you are teaching humans ghost stuff”. Danny just shrugs kinda noncommittally at that. She smirks, “teaching death is more punk rock I guess, babypop”, while attempting to give him a boot kick to the face since she apparently couldn’t leave without causing him some level of bodily harm. He, of course, grabs her ankle and just flips her over him. Hand-to-hand combat was not her strong suit. She does successfully get him one with a laser drumstick though. Which hooray for a burnt hip. Fun. At least he knows she’ll just head back to her lair now, no real need for the capture and release thing; most ghosts pretty firmly decided they’d rather just go home after a Phantom ass beat down than getting sucked into the thermos, so they left immediately. Others were fine to just leave to their business. Some were true bad time problems. And then there was the Box Ghost... fucking moron. Ancients he is going the fuck back to bed.

-

Annnnnndddd now he’s late. Fuck. It’s a little past noon. FUCK. He sighs very loudly while practically scrambling out of bed, getting tangled in the sheets, phasing through the sheets when he remembers he can do shit like that, grabbing random ass shit from his closet and phasing that on. Quick mirror check... and yup, he looks like a dumbass and his sweaters backwards. At least he actually grabbed a sweater, he, however, did not grab pants. But fuck it, shorts it is. Shorts that are shorter on one side than the other because they got burnt and said burn marks are super noticeable on the neon green fabric.

He’s hopping out his window when he tries to grab the frame and just face-plants instead because, fuck, right, no goddamn hand dumbass. Quickly scrambling back and phasing off his sweater while also tripping backwards over the first aid kit he left haphazardly on the floor like a complete lazy idiot. Landing on his floor with an oof and sighing very loudly, just laying there half-naked for a couple of seconds, “why me?”. When he does get up he successfully grabs that straightjacket and makes it out the window, flying off to school while pulling it on.

Danny doesn’t even bother with walking into school, just smacks into the side of the building below the window to his classroom -honestly him having his own classroom still feels slightly surreal but he’s kinda used to it at this point. At least a little anyways- and a quick glance around plus transforming back human and visible and he knows he’s good, his singular hand holding onto the windowsill. Is he cheating by still defying gravity a little? Yes. But one Danny Fenton absolutely does not feel like falling to the ground and making an ass of himself yet again today. Huffing he lifts himself up, head-butts open the window -which can only open both ways because it’s an added safety feature in case a student got phased outside and was trying to get back inside through a closed window. His folks really did think of everything. Well almost everything- and scrambles in while his class freaks out a little. A couple fellow teens even scream/shriek and Ashley -who sits near the windows- actually fell out of her desk. Danny doesn’t even need to look up to hear Val’s extremely audible sigh though.

“What the fuck, Fenton?”.

“Danny!?!”.

“What the Hell?!?”.

“FUCK! Oh Zone thank everything, I thought he was a ghost for a second”.

“You’re late”.

“We’re on the second story, how the Hell did you get up here? And wait, did you head butt a window?? WHY ARE YOU WEARING A STRAIGHTJACKET??

“What????”.

“It’s a look though...”.

“Okay Danny being late isn’t all that weird, but you’d think... Like this is exactly why this class is after noon”.

“Is there a reason your top half and bottom half look like they came from two totally different fashion lines?”.

“Why couldn’t you have been five minutes later? We could have left then”.

“Are you okay?”.

“Danny.... what did you do?”.

“Wait, were you the thump on the wall just now?”.

Danny shuffles to stand up straight and brushes himself off with the long floppy arm-sleeves of the straightjacket, waltzing to the front of the classroom. Fuck he forgot his backpack. Damn. Guess he’ll just have to talk about the assignment instead of handing out the sheet things. Oh well. Turning to the class and gesturing them to shut up by waving his hand around which really just makes the sleeve flap around ridiculously.

Pretty much the entire class bursts out laughing at him after a couple seconds of silence.

Danny sighing, “okay okay, yes I’m late, but class or whatever begins now. Also y’all need to vote on whether your research c̷͝r͟a͘p҉͜ will all be on Phantom or none will be on Phantom. It’s all or nothing, you mǫ͡t̨͘h̴̛e͠r̷͞f̸u̴c̕k̨e͠r͢s̴”. That earns both groans and slight laughs, eh Danny’s cool with that.

Val doesn’t even give him a chance to ask for hand voting when she blinks down at his feet, “Danny... how did you even manage that???”. Danny quirking an eyebrow, “huh?”, then looking down... looking down at his laced-up socks. Fucking damnit. He thought he had phased on shoes, even laced them up; guess he just phased random shoelaces tying around threw his goddamn socks and laced up the socks. Danny sighs and slumps a little, “well okay then, guess today’s a no shoes kinda day”, and sighs again before looking up and shrugging at Val, who huffs disbelievingly at him. Fair.

Todd jerks up his hand, “can we go shoeless too then? Otherwise, unfair”. Danny sighs and waves him off, “go nuts, f̵̧͢uc̴̨ķ̴̕ if I care today”. That earns him a round of blinking and snickering; some people do actually take him up on his apathy and take off their shoes. Dash snapping, “not that I care, but what the Hell happened to you?”. Danny smirks at him, “I decide your grade so you kinda have to care”, and sticks his tongue out him like a petulant brat purely because he can. “I got hit in the head by an ectoplasmicly infused guitar at five am and didn’t regain consciousness till-”, glancing at the clock, “-however many minutes ago”.

Jesse blinks, “I can’t tell if that’s a creative lie... or not”. Danny finger guns before turning to the board and scribbling on it, “alright, voting hand time. Left for no Phantom, right for all Phantom...”.

Annnnnnnd, glancing around at the hands, looks like he’s receiving twenty-odd papers on himself. Wonderful. Whelp hopefully this’ll at least be interesting and mildly creative. Danny nodding with his hand and stump wrist on his hips at the board then turning around to face everyone with a huff, “alright then, now if anyone sends their research to the G.I.W. you automatically fail. I don’t want them getting any more funny ideas and having Phantom around is at least marginally a good thing. Honestly”. Earning him some snickers.

“Just marginally? He’s better than your parents”.

Danny glares at Todd, “hush, y͜ou͟҉ ̵s͞a̸l̴ţ͠y͘̕ ̢w̡͞et̷͡ ̡͠n͟͟ơ̢͝o͏d̡҉le”. Putting his intact hand back on his hips, “my folks aside, assignments. It’s on the syllabus and really you already know what to do so yeah. I’ll give you guys the papers for it tomorrow because, like my shoes apparently, I forgot them”. More than one teen gives him a really weird look and James mutters, “honestly? I think I prefer this, uh, ‘teaching’ style? He’s just so done”.

“More like one of us”.

“He is literally my age, he is one of us”.

“Oh yeah”.

Danny glances up at the ceiling, sighs, and talks slightly louder than necessary, “as for actual lesson plans, more ghost history slash lore, yay-”.

“At least he didn’t forget where he left off”.

Danny points at Todd, because come on man, seriously, “I will steal all your number two pencils, Todd”. James blinking, “why does that work as a legit threat?”. Danny points at him, “because then the scantrons will f̵̨̢u̵c̨͜͡k̶̵ up so he can’t take tests and he’ll have to ask the teacher for one embarrassing himself because no fellow teen would give him theirs because h͘e ̸s̨͢u̸̧̡c̷̡ks̕͠”.

“The fact that that is even slightly thought out and remotely realistic is actually worse”.

Dash actually looks legit slightly concerned and weirded out. Maybe he finally realised Danny’s kinda a whole ass nightmare when he feels like it. That’s without adding in the whole half-ghost clusterfuck he’s got going on.

-

Danny gets about halfway through his class when Charles just straight up opens the door. Danny should booby trap that sometime. “Okay I can’t believe I’m asking you this but tell me you have a spare stapler... what am I looking at here?”.

Danny had been gesturing a bit exaggeratedly at the whiteboard that had a doodle of a couple of Ancients on it, him dropping his arms and turning to the science teacher, “what, in any world, would make you think I have a spare of anything other than coffee, guns, thermoses, and maybe food; though the last one may or may not be inedible. Also, today was a crazy person day so yes this is, in fact, a straightjacket”. The fellow teacher smirks, “get that from the asylum you stayed at?”. Danny rolls his eyes, “oh har har, dickweed”, and chuckles; Charles was one of the teachers he got on better with even if the guy had zero sense of boundaries and sticks his nose in just about anything he found interesting, and Danny was basically a walking ball of interesting. Danny snaps his fingers and turns to the class, “oh I have actually been to an asylum before though”.

Ashley coughs, “Danny, you could make a living off of surprising people with random life bits. Get a tv show”.

Danny’s ghost sense goes off at the exact moment that an echoing voice says, “oh I quite agree”, from the direction of the window.

Charles goes wide-eyed and blurts out, “wellsinceyouclearlydon’thaveastaplerI’mgoingtogofindonebye”, and promptly shuts the door with a slam. Danny, meanwhile, snaps his head to the window and watches the Ghost Writer cross his legs while floating a bit above the windowsill. Danny blinks, “what and why”, and sounding stern enough to make a couple students jump/jerk in their seats. Valerie, Emilie, and a few others have weapons drawn already; expected and good really. The Ghost Writer rolls his eyes faintly and tosses his scarf over one shoulder dramatically while Danny slowly scoots over to his desk, not that the Ghost Writer seems to care, pursing his lips at Danny, “curious. Here I thought you had a hatred for literature and education”.

Danny rolls his eyes harshly, “no. Just Christmas”, pooping open one of the drawers. The class just watching tensely in the background.

“Christmas books”.

Danny rolls his eyes again, “Ancients fuck, man”, smirking a little, “here have some-”, jerking up an orange -that he, yes, had in his desk purely to spite this very specific ghost even though the Ghost Writer basically never came to the Mortal Realm- and stabbing it with his nails to make its juices leak down his hand/arm and makes the room smell noticeably citrusy, “-vitamin C for cannonball so you can shoot on outta here”. Valerie side-eyes Danny with a slightly dumbfounded look before dropping her arms, and her gun, down and turning to him, “seriously?”. Danny just shrugs loosely and bites a chunk out of the orange earning a lot of disgusted looks. Fair, he hadn’t exactly peeled off the skin or anything. But hey, the Ghost Writer looks thoroughly and deeply offended; so that’s a point for Danny.

The Ghost Writer audibly sighs, pushes up his glasses, and closes his eyes for a second before speaking up, “as I’m sure you know, The GhostWriters Manor has a fairly high and active patronage”, glaring a little, “regardless of men of a certain sort being unwelcome“.

Brittney leans over to Ashley, who’s shaking and a little stiff, “oooo I wonder what the heck Danny did. Boy’s banned from a library”. Dash scoffs weakly and a little wide-eyed, “o-oh please, getting banned from a library is, ah, is weak sauce”. Todd smirking at the jock, “smooooth”; and gets flipped off for the comment.

Danny shrugs and bites the orange with emphasis, speaking through a mouthful, “‘ell maye searaint ‘en ould ave ettr tases”, and swallows harshly. The Ghost Writer scowls. Danny quirking an eyebrow after a bit, “soooo?”. Making the ghost shake his head and mutter, “I truly can’t believe this”, then looking to Danny, “as a man of the written word there is a level of... respect, even begrudging respect, for those that teach it”, digging into his satchel and pulling out a card, “you may have a card again”; the Ghost Writer sounds almost physically pained to be saying that. Which of course means Danny absolutely has to bug the guy and the windows being phase-proof gives Danny ample time to do so.

Danny smirks, “and here I thought I was never even granted one in the first place”, and dramatically puts a hand to his chest, sounding overly sarcastic, “iMaGiNe HoW bLeSsEd I mUsT fEeL tO bE rEcEiViNg SuCh A tRuLy SpLeNdId GiFt SuCh As ThIs”, sauntering over in the most fruity and dramatic way he possibly can, popping open the window seductively, and snatching away the card, “ThAnKs BaBe”, and winks like an absolute ass.

Emilie collapses to the floor and starts wheeze laughing.

The Ghost Writer jerks away from him, scowls, and adjusts his glasses while trying to compose himself. Huffing a little, “consider the libraries resources yours, do be at least slightly decent and use them educationally”, the vanishing from sight; Danny following the flying off transparent ghost with his eyes before pulling his front half back into his classroom fully. Huh. Will he actually take up the ghosts offer? Might actually be a good idea also, fuck the gov he now has even more access to information they could only ever salivate over in dreamland.

Turning back to the class, “whelp, that happened”, humming and tilting his head, “too bad I definitely can’t get approval for an impromptu field trip to a ghost library”.

Valerie throws up her hands, slumps back into her desk, shoves her gun back into her bag, and glares at Danny. Todd bursts out laughing while Jesse blinks, “did that just happen?”. Dash screws up his face a little, “the Hell you little wimp?”. Danny’s just going to assume the guy never realised that Danny kinda had a pair of brass balls.

Danny smirks at the class, smacking the whiteboard, “I’m tougher than you, deal with it or eat a pink slip. Now class is basically over so I’m not even going to bother continuing with this, but in case any of y’all are wondering The Ghost Writer gains power from the influence, importance, and popularity of any form of writing that was written by a ghostwriter or anonymously. Totally in charge of basically the biggest library in the Zone, which yes I was banned from apparently due to blowing up a book”. Todd scoffs at that and rolls his eyes, clearly trying to seem unimpressed.

Ashley sticks up a hand and speaks anyway, “did you really not know you were banned?”. Danny waves her off with his handless arm, okay he’s got a palm again but stilll, “do you know just how many places have banned me or my entire family”, tilting his head, “or just my dad at least”, which earns him some chucking before the bell goes off and he starts shooing everyone out loosely. Emilie goes right up to his desk though, grinning almost meanly, “tell me you are going to bring ghost books”. Valerie goes wide-eyed a little and glares at the back of Emilie’s head, then at Danny when he smirks and shrugs, “oh I don’t see why not, heck let’s make that the reading requirement. Read a book written by ghosts”. Val makes a series of faces, likely torn between curiosity and being completely done with his general shit. Emile smirks and fist bumps before leaving.

Danny quirking an eyebrow at Valerie getting her to finally speak up, “you are unbelievable, Danny”, shaking her head and walking closer, “so about this assignment thing-”.

Danny groans dramatically, “oh Ancients, way to make me feel like a teacher”. She smacks him over the head for that, “better?”. Danny just smirks and nods curtly, giving a cheery, “yup”. Valerie rolls her eyes, “anyway, I know it’s been decided everyone’s doing Phantom-”, rolling her eyes a little, “-but could I maybe do mine on the other Phantom”, and stares at him.

Oh she is so totally trying to gauge if he knows shit, not that that was remotely subtle. Eyeing her a little, “if you don’t save that kind of subject to your computer then sure, I guess I didn’t specify Danny with a y Phantom. But-”, squinting just a little, “-if, say, the G.I.W. manage to hack things and find out some things that might be dangerous”. Valerie blinks before shaking her head in disbelief, “how the Zone”, sighing, “I’m pretty good with tech these days, but yeah okay”, and gives him a bit of a weird look before rushing off at the warning bell.

---

Does Danny decide to take up the Ghost Writers offer? Yes, yes he does. Barging in and walking around like he owns the place, the Ghost Writer blatantly massaging his temples while Danny walks up to the guys little counter thingy, “so got any twelve odd copies of the same fiction book? That a bunch of teens who may or may not wreck them can have? Also could totally use some lore and historical books, you know, for reasons”.

The Ghost Writer sighs, pours himself some tea, gets up and nods, “yes, do attempt to see them returned though”.

“I make no promises”.

That gets him another sigh but Danny follows the ghost around anyway. The Ghost Writer winds up getting a bit excited and gives him an honestly excessive amount of books at the end of the day. Danny also learns that apparently it was Ember who was a blabbermouth and told the writing ghost when she was checking out, or something, a musician's after-death memoir. Figures a singer couldn’t keep her mouth shut.

-

The Ghost Writer patting the stack almost affectionately, “a happy book is a read book and I have a lot here, so enjoy”, and gives Danny a ‘come back’ look that’s just slightly threatening which Danny’s just going to assume is because the guy had vaguely forgotten who he’s talking to, that or the Ghost Writer hated him a lot less than he thought. The ghost holding up a finger, “ah yes, since you were proactive and showed at least some genuine care for the craft, here”, and plops a little green writing quill down on the stack. Danny is oddly genuinely touched.

Danny blushing and rubbing his neck a bit, “uh, appreciated?”. This honestly said more than it seemed, sure they clearly were bickering and were not exactly fond of each other but it seemed that the Ghost Writer was yet another once-antagonistic ghost that was now at least somewhat on team Phantom’s side.

“Yes, now if you’re done loitering”, the Ghost Writer makes shooing motions at Danny, “be on your way”. Danny rolls his eyes but does, in fact, leave... with an unnecessary amount of books in tow.  

Chapter 4:  An Education In Fashion

So apparently someone went and threw a little complaint about Danny’s straightjacket stunt, him wearing a near-floor-length parka the next day with shorts probably didn’t help though, and now Danny’s at the mall for reasons other than having fun or fighting some ghost. How does Danny know someone complained? Well a little conversation with Lancer that went a little something like this: “Daniel, I know the school’s a little... lax, but we do actually have a dress code. Which again, you are supposed to actually be marginally following unless it’s for safety reasons”. Which he had of course responded to with, “technically a straightjacket is a restraining device sooooo...”, which got him glared at. In short, Danny now had to buy new clothing. New clothing meant for teaching, which was weird as fuck.

Was he doing this alone? Zone no! He had absolutely recruited Sam and Tuck to wander around with him. Which, speaking of...

“Sup, dude!”.

Danny grins to himself before turning to his friends, “hey, Tuck man”, looking to Sam and nodding, “look at you slumming it like a mall goth”. Sam rolls her eyes at him and flips him off aggressively. Tuck smacks his arm, “more like look at you actually buying clothing new instead of digging through used stores for cheap shit. What? Did Casperhigh finally develop standards?”, and smirks.

Sam scowls at the techno-geek, “it’s better that he doesn’t support corporate-run stores and name brand garbage. What with all the slave labour, animal abuse, and terrible worker treatment”. Danny looks down very pointedly at her plaid T.U.K creepers that are 100% not bought from a used store; Sam shoves him, making him stagger a little with a laugh.

Him looking to Tucker, “Lance asked kinda nice-ishly so I’m being nice to the poor man”, smirking, “and maybe this’ll make up for me sorta kinda being responsible for one of the water fountains spewing out black water for a bit there”. Both of them stare at him for a bit before laughing, Tucker patting his back after a bit with a smile, “they hired you, what did they expect”.

Danny sticks his arms out exaggeratedly while the trio start walking, “I keep telling them that!”. Sam shaking her head with a smile, “well trying to appease the man or not, don’t you dare say we’re suit shopping”. Danny screwing his face up at her before gesturing around, “do you see Vladdie around? Because I fucking guarantee you he’d have some kind of sensor or informant for if I so much as stepped into a suit store or tailor, and he’d immediately show up to at least stare at my choices judgingly or offer to pay by flashing around a fancy credit card”. Tucker snorting, “that shouldn’t feel as accurate as it does”; making everyone laugh as they head into one of the ‘teen’ oriented stores. Danny was buying new passable clothing, not high-class ‘adult’ clothing.

The first thing Danny sees is bandanas, MORE FUCKING BANDANAS! Yes, he’s so here for this. Well not this specifically but you know. He grabs a new alien one, one that looks like a white dragons mouth (Tuck muttered something about seeing one just like that at a furry con which really just encouraged Danny to take it but with a shit-eating grin), two ghost ones because of course and if one of them is pink and glittery and has sequins then that’s his business and no one else’s shut up, another that looks like bloody tie-dye, and one that reads ‘SATAN just do it’ with a Nike checkmark; the last one might just get him in trouble but he’s pretty sure just the existence of his class/him already pisses off Christianity so why not go for a home run.

Sam eyes the SATAN bandana as she walks back over from another store, her smirking, “nice. Anyway, shoes”, and shoves a bag at him. Danny quirking an eyebrow while digging inside and chuckling at the white doc martins, snorting, “I thought I was the only one here supposed to be making jokes about my suit while also blatantly hinting at my shit”.

Sam scowls and crosses her arms, “they’re not sneakers and they’re mildly ‘professional’, deal with it”. Danny just chuckles as he pays for his bandanas and the dress-shirt with frowning depressed bananas all over it that Tuck threw at him.

Walking out and looking around before all three share a Look, breaking out in matching grins and speaking in unison, “HotTopic”, and then march off with determination written across their faces; which yes, gets them actively avoided by everyone who knew who they were, which was basically all of Amity these days.

Danny’s got crushed velvet straight cut pants that marginally resemble dress pants -Lancer will so not let him get away with freezer burnt crust pants or grey sweat pants at an assembly or whatever- folded over an arm while he’s shoving around some of the angsty and anime-themed hoodies when Kitty finally decides to approach him. Did he know she was here? Yes, obviously. Be weird and concerning if he didn’t. But she was generally well behaved so he let her be. The biggest risk her and Johnny usually posed was traffic violations. So not his problem.

Anyway, Kitty pokes the pants, quirks an eyebrow and hums a little, “nice choice there, Danny”, humming a little more before grabbing up a hoodie with a plague doctor on it and the words ‘there is no cure only infection, and I’m patient zero’, and shoving it at him, “that’s more your style”.

Danny blinks, “I see you’re trying to cut me with edge now, geez. But technically-”, holding up a finger from his unoccupied hand, “-anything that sheds ectoplasm is ‘contagious’ sooooooo”, and rolls his wrist. She gives him a pouty look, “I don’t know what I expected”.

Sam walks up, eyes the punk ghost before looking to Danny, “you’re getting a dress tailcoat, it says ‘dead boy’ on it”; making Danny wheeze a little and nod with a stupid grin. Kitty smiles a little bit before waving the goth off and starts walking away, “looks like you’ve already got a lady friend clinging around so I’ll be going”. Sam chucks a necklace at her while Danny coughs.

Regardless he gets the sweater because now he kinda has to. The tailcoat too though, because of course.

-

Sam and Tuck already have their supersized order of fries and respective meat and veggie burgers while Danny’s ordering his go-to coffee from his go-to coffee shop, gotta get in that dose of judgemental and mildly fearful staring. But Charles -yes Charles, not Lancer. Why the fuck?- winds up calling and Danny picks up feeling just mildly confused and curious, “uh, why? Also, how?”.

“So Danny, you’re an adult, a perfectly responsible adult-”. That tone is ominous as fuck, damnit. “-a responsible adult who does absolutely know how to safely handle ectoplasm-”. Oh Ancients.

Danny cuts him off, “what did you do to my classroom?”.

“Wh-what? I- nothing. Better question is what and why did you, honestly really, have a bomb-rigged drawer? Also, how does someone... convince a chunk of ectoplasm to get out of your closet and stop eating your ties? I mean, I think it might have eyes but I might also be wrong and it keeps squirming away from the microscope, which why would it do that?”.

Danny gives a pained smile, looks to the barista who’s now holding his venti cup filled with around thirty espresso shots, Danny sighing, “if I give you a fifty, could I convince you to add five more to that?”.

“What?”. Danny absolutely ignores Charles.

The barista looks down at the cup like she’s debating if potential manslaughter due to willful negligence was worth fifty dollars. Apparently yes, yes it is. She adds five more shots and Danny’s down fifty more bucks.

He absolutely catches her squatting down staring vacantly at the fifty muttering, “but was it worth it”, though. He cringes just a little bit; then he gets back to the phone call. Sighing, “blob ghosts typically have eyes, Charles, and the little guy’s eating your ties because you constantly let the things dangle down into your samples and don’t fucking wash them in an ectophobic solution. Gosh”, and rolls his eyes as he sits back down with his friends; who just quirk their eyebrows at him while he keeps talking away, “and of course my desk is bobby-trapped, man. If the G.I.W. activates that they’d be so bothered by the cleanliness breach that they’d just go home”. Tuck chokes and smacks the table comically a couple of times, making loud thumping noises.

Charles actually laughs, “true! So what can you do about the blob, buddy?”.

Danny screws up his face, pulls the phone away from his ear and stares down at it. Glancing to his friends, “a teacher just called me ‘buddy’???”, Danny’s not quite sure how to react to that, them laughing at him doesn’t help. Shaking his head he returns the phone to his ear and gives a cheery, “nope! Enjoy your new pet!”, and hangs up on the guy.

“Wha-”.

Danny starts eating the fries.

Tucker points his second burger at him, “you know...”. Danny pointing right back at him with a fry, “hush you”. He knows he’s a teacher himself alright, geez.

(Charles seemingly took Danny up on that pet comment and actually called FentonWorks for a containment unit and to ask about ‘ghost pet care’, Danny’s mom gave him the phone with a truly dumbfounded expression).

---

Alright, today’s the day. What day? Why the day to get paper assignments for the first goddamn time ever and try not to lose, destroy, contaminate, or otherwise ruin them. He’s fucked. Solidly fucked. But hey, at least it’s also the day to show off his shit fashion choices as well, little ray of sunshine there. Some light in the darkness.

He should probably attempt to win some points with Lancer and wear the dress shirt, honestly. So that’s what he’s gonna do. Depressed banana dress shirt, sequin alien bandana, crushed velvet pants, and what the heck the ‘dead boy’ tailcoat too why not; this boy is getting DRESSED UP today! And fine, yes he looks good based on his mirror's reflection; but his mirror is definitely ecto-contaminated so it might not be entirely trustworthy.

His dad also whistling at him as he heads downstairs for breakfast isn’t trustworthy either, considering the man’s fashion style was less of a ‘style’ and more of a scientific protective mess of orange and the occasional tie. Danny rolls his eyes and waves his dad off, “oh whatever, needed ‘proper attire’”, shrugging loosly, “whatever that means”. Jack beams, “just wear a jumpsuit! That’s always proper!”. Maddie looks away from the microwave she’s nuking some noodles in to glare at him, “not at a reunion, dear”; making Danny chuckle to himself while Jack rubs his neck. She still waves cheerily at Danny as he leaves though so...

-

This is one of those days he actually leaves early enough for a few quick patrol laps around his town, two ectopusses, the Box Ghost (because of course), all followed by him literally tripping into one of Skulker’s traps; hence why he was now peeling a basic ass bear trap -be more creative, tinman- off his leg. At least he had the sense to wipe off the ectoplasm with one of his random shit handkerchiefs before walking to the classroom and loudly dropping said beartrap on his desk in what was probably a slightly terrifying alpha move.

Is he early now? Haha no. At least three people jumped from the sudden loud noise. But fuck, Danny was NOT waiting around for Skulker to show his ass for longer than three minutes. Danny had shit to do, man. And apparently the local poacher can’t bother to be punctual when his traps go off. Fuck.

James blinks, “what the fuck?”. While Valerie just sighs and rolls her eyes, leaning back against her chair, “you stumbled on one of Skulker’s traps, didn’t you?”. Danny waves a hand around limply, “yeah? Yer point?”; making her roll her eyes at him very hard.

Danny doesn’t even get a chance to pick up the whiteboard marker before he’s pausing as his throat ices up, him holding up a finger, and just turning to walk right back out the classroom door. Fucking Skulker, goddamnit. But hey, his tailcoat whipping/fluttering about in the air in a way that was actually kinda badass was probably cool looking. He doesn’t have attendance points but he does have style points today motherfuckers.

Dale blinking, “did he just walk in only to leave again?”, slapping the desk, “well I guess he did drop off a bear trap from a ghost so... samples count as teaching?”. Todd snorting and rolling his eyes, “that doesn’t count for shit”; Valerie just chucks a pencil at him.

“I’m more interested in his whole get up. Who pairs a fucking tailcoat with sequin anything?”.

“Oh shut it, Amber. At least he didn’t come in wit a tie or a freaking suit”.

Dash snorts and actually laughs a little, “oh imagine that little twink in a suit! Ha!”. Which just makes Valerie smirk and turn to the jock, “he looks better in one than you do, Dash”.

“Oh fuck you, reject”. That comment was the only excuse Valerie felt she needed for proceeding to kick him in the chin, which might have started up a minor brawl by the time Danny got back.

Danny’s mildly attempting to fix his hair when he hip-checks his way back into his classroom, pausing with his hand stuck halfway through his hair at Valerie just having Dash in a headlock on the floor. Danny blinking, “mmmmm’ ‘kay”. Which fine, the class starts laughing at him for. Danny talks right over said chuckling, “so once somebody’s done with their little vice grip, or whatever, on another person everyone can relinquish their vice grip on their assignment shit and gimme gimme”. Val flips him off but hey, at least she lets Dash start breathing again. It’s something. And everyone does, in fact, start getting up to give him their work. Valerie trying to quietly and subtly ask him if ‘he’s okay’ when she hands hers over though. Danny sighing and shrugging limply, ���eh I’m good, Skulker’s gonna be hearing from my lawyers though”, and smirks; resulting in Val smacking him over the head with a scowl.

-

Lancer showing up just after the bell, looking Danny up and down, and nodding with a, “good”, is weirdly chastising and awkwardly awkward. Ashley giggling to herself, “oh I get it, boy got in trouble for his clothing ‘choices’”. Danny points at her aggressively, “hush you”. Lancer leaves without choosing to comment on that.

---

Does Danny basically use the next couple of school days to make the school/his class his own personal fashion runway? Yes, yes he does. Did he also decide to melt some glue on the end of his tailcoat and file it to be sharp and blade-like? Yup. Was that very thing why Millie was currently done with his shit and arguing with him? Also yes.

“He cut the case lock for the microscope and ruined an entire three hundred dollar machine! We’re allowed to be armed but not wear literal blades as clothing!”.

Lancer is very clearly restraining a sigh.

Charles shrugs from the couch, “hey buddy, it was my machine and you don’t see me complaining”, looking to Danny, “I’m more curious about the how honestly”. Which fucking tracks for the man. Millie gestures at Charles, garish bangle bracelets clinking around in the process, “it’s the schools”, turning to Lancer, “at least fine the child”.

Danny crosses his arms, “hey, I’m eighteen not a ‘child’”, he was still considered a child ghost but that was besides the point.

Lancer pinches his nose and holds up a hand, which Millie actually listens too thank fuck for that. Danny’s pretty sure Lancer is literally the only person that lady respects even slightly. “While I’m certain it was an accident-”, glancing at Danny which Danny rubs his neck sheepishly over before Lancer continues, “-and the school could certainly just add this onto the Fenton tab, I doubt that would pose much of a solution for the fact that you simply don’t like Daniel very much, Millie”.

Millie huffs and crosses her arms, “he’s a menace-”. Danny can’t even argue against that. “-is barely older than most of the students-”. Also true. “-and couldn’t we have literally anyone else, anyone who’s a competent decent respectable person, teach his elective”. Oh this woman just loved mocking and treating non-core classes as lesser.

Danny smirks, “be careful or Remi’s gonna put paint in your pencil drawer again”. She scowls at him for that, pointing at him aggressively, “I know you helped her with that”. Danny will neither confirm nor deny that, “oh but how could I possibly remember when your nasty yellow fake nails are being way too distracting”.

“Why I never-”.

Lancer interjects at this point, Danny’s surprised the man even let him finish his witty comeback/insult. “That’s enough, you two clearly need some bonding time so-”, looking to the math teacher, “-Millie, you’ll be sitting in on Daniel’s class, I know you don’t have any scheduled class during that time and that you’re all caught up on grading, so don’t give me that excuse”; she scowls at him. Lancer looking to Danny, “and Daniel, you’ll sit in on her second block grade twelves”, glaring, “and no bathroom breaks”. Danny sags and whines very dramatically and very petulantly; Charles just starts snickering while attempting -and failing- to cover up said snickering with his hand.

Danny is so not impressed. Neither is Millie but that’s not Danny’s problem now is it. But now that Danny thinks about it, this is the perfect excuse to talk about ghost hunger and force someone who didn’t sign up for this shit to listen to/deal with his shit. Danny might just give Millie a more than slightly malicious smirk as he shoves Charles out of the way enough to sit on the couch; the man just rolling with it while trying not to laugh at his expense any further.

Danny only came early today for the cookies Remi said she’d drop off in the lounge, look how hard that bit him in the ass. Doesn’t even have time to sit and enjoy more than one cup of coffee now. Fuck. Wearing his SATAN bandana was probably asking for it a bit though. Flipping out his phone while nibbling on a cookie and blatantly ignoring Millie storming out in a huff.

thealiveone: so guess who just jacked up the tab AND pissed off mille

PDAxpda: millies the math teach right?

Nightshade: nice

thealiveone: yup! she like always hates me nothing new there

thealiveone: she no happy about recent bought of destruction of property

PDAXpda: someone needs to chill that’s what you do

thealiveone: ouch but yes and now have excuse to force her to hear out ghost hunger

Nightshade: you cruel cruel man I apporv

Nightshade: that bitch gave me so much shit about my ‘satanic’ fashion

thealiveone: ahhh yes I remever that

thealiveone: from back when we were young

thealiveone: our youthful days

PDAXpda: *pfffft*

thealiveone: anyone any one want cookies?

Nightshade: 😆🙃 sure Danny

-

By the time it’s time for Danny to head to his shit he has consumed three cookies and stuffed around eight intangibly inside his body for safekeeping; not like Sam and Tuck gave a shit about eating/using stuff from inside him.

Is Millie waiting judgementally outside of his classroom? Yes. Does he care? No. The class absolutely eyes him and the math teacher as he waltz’s in though. Todd snickering, “ooooo someone needs a babysitter do they?”.  Danny just smirks, “oh no Lance-y’s just punishing his problem children. Anyway today’s subject will be light cannibalism”, and smirks wickedly.

Millie glares while taking a seat off to the side, “I’m not the child here”.

“I’m not the one being petty”.

“You broke a three hundred dollar machine”.

“And? Your point?”.

At this point most of the class is snickering, Valerie shakes her head, “you never change, Danny”. Danny finger-gunning, “and never plan to”. Millie’s scowl deepens.

Danny rummages through his desk muttering, “where’d I put it, where’d I put it”, all the while. Because fine, maybe he was saving this subject for when he thought it would be the most impactful, so sue him. Grinning when he actually finds and starts digging out the little habitat with around five or six blob ghosts in it. Well technically they were blebs, a subspecies of blobs, but whatever. These would have probably been a lot easier to find if he hadn’t modified the bottom drawer to be connected to a slight pocket dimension… but then they wouldn’t have even fit in the drawer in the first place. You win some you lose some.

James blinking as Danny puts the container on his desk somewhat loudly, “huh, guess it’s ‘live’ specimens again. Neat”. Emilie grins, “awww they’re cute”, then glares/smirks at Valerie daring the girl to argue. Valerie just rolls her eyes. Danny also pulling out a blender makes everyone go awkwardly and cautiously silent though. Danny’s just busy cursing while he tries to plug the stupid thing in, “why the f̴̢uc̸̢k is it all bent up?”. No one elects to point out any obvious answers to that one.

Danny walking back over to his desk and popping open the bleb containment unit, “so anyone wanna taste test some basic b̴̡i҉̧t͟͟ch̕͠ ghost food?”, and proceeds to drop the bleb into the blender while simultaneously turning it on; does he get ecto splattered on his face because he forgot the blender lid? Oh absolutely and he’s cool with that. At least half the class jerks back and/or screws up their faces. Millie looks deeply offended; success! Danny licks a bit off of his cheek while staring at the class just to be extra. Dash and Val are the only ones who look completely unphased -though Todd’s trying to look unphased- seeing as both of them had seen him straight-up eat a ghost before.

Ashley squeaks, “um, no?”. Which Danny busts out laughing over and losses his composure, sitting on the edge of his desk, “I’m not serious, Ashley. And don’t worry about the little guy, as we’ve discussed, non-cored ghosts basically respawn”, holding up a finger, “plus! Bleb’s like being eaten”, at that he takes a swig straight from the blender and winks at Millie.

Jasper mutters, “oh Zone he’s doing this to fuck with Ms. Felmer”.

“Mood”.

“Understandable”.

Dale chuckles, “I knew Danny was a menace but damn”. Dash looks a little freaked out, “did I mess his taste buds up by making him eat my underwear?”. Danny absolutely has to address that, pointing at him with the blender slightly, “you are not nearly that influential on my life, Dash”.

“Whatever, Fentaco”.

Millie actually snaps, “Mr. Baxter”, over that jab; making the jock roll his eyes and huff. Her voice sounding a wee bit strained pleases Danny greatly though. Truly.

Danny taps the containment container, “now remember I have a really bloody weird ecto-contamination so do not try that at home. Anyway, ghost hunger involves the eating of ghosts. Surprise surprise, I know. And if none of you leave this class today without losing your lunch I will feel personally offended…”. Again, why did the principal think putting this class directly after lunch was a good idea? Oh well, the janitor's problem now.

-

Did anyone actually wind up throwing up? Yes actually. Not Millie though, much to Danny’s dismay. She did look close multiple times though. And fine, maybe, maybe, Danny went into far more detail than really necessary. Which absolutely explains Brittney sticking up a hand and asking, “how do you even know this this well”, while looking more than a little sick. A few other teens nodding their agreement and mutual curiosity.

Danny snickers, “I have walked in on Technus showering and brushing his teeth, do you really think I haven’t walked in repeatedly on a ghost eating another ghost. Especially when all our local blobs and whisps are totally smitten with Phantom’s stomach?”. That earns him a very loud round of gagging, and Val’s staring at her desk like she’s having a mild crisis. Ah today’s been a good day.

“Forget I asked. What the Hell”.

That just makes Danny smirk as the bell goes off. That makes Danny jolt out of his seat, summon his green quill out of his hair, and start wildly scribbling on the board, “oh! Oh! Before you go, grab your assignment şh͘͜i҉͞t̶͝ and to the person who wrote about the theory that Phantom’s a parasitic species and that’s why he can stay here so long -you know who you are- I hate you. Your little quizzes are in there too, I realise I was lazy about marking şh͘͜i҉͞t̶͝ don’t at me. Also also, this-”, tapping the board, “-is the room I’ll be in for the parent-teacher thingy ma jiggy not this room, for reasons”. Which gets him more than a little snickering and some pointed glances at the -now empty- blender, while everyone takes their graded shit. Danny’s just glad he managed to not lose or destroy anyone’s shit. Though Emilie’s quiz did have a mysterious new ectoplasm stain that he… attempted… to get out. He tried okay?

Millie glares at him as she gets up last to leave, “you, boy, are an affront to humanity”, then promptly leaves. Danny puts a hand to his chest and very loudly says, “why thank you”.

Unfortunately, he is now stuck staying here ‘till her shitty math class. Fuck. Sighing loudly at his ceiling before smirking and chuckling a little, “time to do some sketchy shit, do da, do da”.  He could use some ghost summoning practice.

-

Needless to say half an hour later the schools been evacuated and there’s a pissed off dragon ghost -not from Dora’s kingdom which kinda shocked Danny- flying around. Most of the teachers are glaring at him, Lancer included. At least he’s got a duplicate of himself in Phantom form off throwing fist-a-cuffs; well… more like arguing aggressively about not meaning to summon the one goddamn dragon that wasn’t from the Draconic's kingdom.

Lancer sighs at grounded human form him, “you’re still sitting in on Millie’s math class”.

“Awwwww”. Danny smirks a little, “also, I need a new desk chair”. Lancer puts his head in his hands and shakes his head faintly.

Danny (as Phantom) and the goddamn dragon pause as Red flys up on her hoverboard. Danny waving goofily, “sup Red”, pointing at the dragon, “he’s just upsetti spaghetti, not a real problemo”. He can feel Red’s annoyance and disapproval. The dragon just growls and attempts to breathe fire at her; which she obviously dodges.

Danny gestures at the dragon while she basically unloads on them, “blame your teacher of ghost things!”, and then resumes attempting to capture the dragon. He can easily hear Red mutter, “Zone damn it, Danny”; which fine, he chuckles at.

Eventually, Danny does manage to get the dragon into his thermos. There’s probably one more ghost out there with a bone to pick with him though. Oops. He’s not even slightly surprised to get a chat message from Val a little later.

Robin: whhhhhhhyyyyyyyyy

thealiveone: 😏

thealiveone: are you not entertained

Robin: 😑🖕🏻

thealiveone: *snicker*

(Danny still does, in fact, have to sit through math, which was just as torturous as he remembers. Millie made it even more awful of course. Though unlike him she didn’t change her class plan just to fuck with his day, she did treat him like a student and called on him to answer questions constantly though… that got him so much subtle mocking).

---

The parent-teacher thing comes up way quicker than he would have liked. Lancer giving him a shoulder pat as Danny slumps down into this room's chair, “I’m sure this will go just fine”. Danny rolls his eyes, “I’m a literal teen, Lance. Adult-y folks aren’t known for respecting teens or whatever”.

Lancer deadpans, “somehow, Daniel, I doubt you actually care”. Making Danny snort, “true true. I do still have a point though”.

“Which is exactly why I’ll be staying here and supervising”.

Danny actively groans at that. But fine, understandable.

Of course the first parents, fuck this is weird Ancients, show up while Danny’s partway through spinning around in his chair. It’s Emilie and she is smirking, telling Danny that they absolutely don’t know this random teen is the teacher. Hell yeah time to fuck with them.

Emilie’s mom looks around, “oh is the teacher not here yet?”, looking to Lancer, “I doubt you’re also the ecto-ology teacher”. Lancer actually chuckles a little at that before shaking his head.

Danny snorts and stands up a bit dramatically, “sorry to say but… he died. Totally dead”. Emilie snickers into her hand. Val picks that exact moment to barge in herself with her dad, “Danny, stop telling people you’re dead. You walking problem”.

Mr. Gray quirks an eyebrow at Danny, “ah so my Valerie was telling the truth, somehow I’m both surprised and not”, then walks right up to Danny, claps him on the shoulder, and says, “good for you, lad”. Which Danny rubs his neck a bit sheepishly over. Both Val’s dad and Tuck’s folks worried about his ass, usually more than his own folks did; which, yes, was kinda a bit fucking wild.

Emilie’s mom blinks and looks to her husband then back to Danny, “you’re? the teacher?”. Lancer takes that moment to actually speak up, “indeed Daniel is. Arguably he’s the most qualified for the position, and excluding some… incidences… his performance is more than acceptable”.

Danny snorts, “complimenting and insulting me all in one go, nice”, and finger-guns at the man. Lancer just gives him a fond but exasperated look.

Emilie’s mom purses her lips before shrugging after a bit. Her and her husband both walking over and sitting down, Emilie lounging behind. “Well alright then, though you are certainly a little young to be in such a position of power-”. Danny has to seriously resist throwing his head back, cackling, and saying ‘you have no idea’ at that because fuck saying he had too much power was a goddamn fucking understatement. “-but how is she doing?”, looking over her shoulder to eyeball Emilie slightly, “not being too much of a distraction”.

Danny snorts, “ma’am, being a distraction is basically my job in class. I guess you could say I encourage active discussion and pretty much ignore the ‘put up your hand before speaking’ rule altogether”. Emilie snorts, “considering you blew up the classroom a few days ago…”.

Her dad sighs, “well I guess that’s still better than Jack”. Which fine, Danny snorts at.

Danny pointing at the man, “to be fair, I’ve taken plenty protective measures and do, in fact, know what I’m doing. The accidental wrong dragon summoning was just a miscalculation and wasn’t even during class time”.

Lancer glares at him a little, “yes, and now you’re banned from unapproved experimentation”. Danny just pouts at him before actually doing the class talking stuff he’s supposed to be doing. Val and her dad are just ‘waiting’ off to the side and chuckling at him faintly.

When it is Mr. Gray’s turn the man immediately asks, “she’s not letting outside interests interfere with your class, is she?”. Danny can practically feel the threat of grounding coming off of that question, holy shit. Lancer dutifully pretends to not be listening, Danny is goddamn postivite Lancer knows about Val since she’s way easier to figure out than him.

Danny chuckles, “naw, in fact I can say that my class is the only one she doesn’t ditch”, and gives a very cocky proud grin. Like a preening peacock. Val glares at him a little, “that’s because you boobytrapped the door. No one can leave unless you let them”. Danny just smirks more, “what can I say? I know how to hold a hostage or two”. Val clearly can’t help snorting/laughing at that. Mr. Gray actually looks a little pleased and impressed.

From there pretty much all the meetings are boring and pretty typical. Granted he did tell Todd’s folks that ‘Todd’s a real dick’, which Lancer apologised for on Danny’s behalf. Todd’s dad saying ‘oh we know’ threw Lancer through a bit of a loop though. And apparently Danny calling their son a dick made him more trustable in their eyes, who knew? Dash’s dad made a joke about how ‘hey aren't you that boy my son whipped into shape?!?’ and laughed heartily. Which lead to Lancer going off on a tangent about Mrs. Testlauf’s unhealthy teaching methods, which is how Danny learned that there is a serious beef between the two.

But then came Sophia with her parents, Sophia was one of the freshmen whose family moved here somewhat recently. Girl basically never talked and always seemed cautious. She did perk up a little whenever anything really dark or gory came up -can’t exactly talk about dead people without speaking of brutal horrid violent death- so Danny thinks she’s, like, a closet Goth or Emo or something. Sam would love to introduce her to the ookie spookie side.

Mrs. Holly comes in walking like she’s a judgmental holier-than-thou know it all with some serious entitlement issues, so Danny’s pretty sure this is just going to be so fun. Sophia looks a little more meek and sheepish than usual too. Mrs. Holly huffs, “I truly can’t believe they’d have such a garish class nonetheless let a child from such a proper family take it”, and huffs for a second time. Mr. Holly shaking his head, “truly unbelievable”. Ahhh Danny can see where this is going, even Lancer's frowning a little. Now Danny could either be ‘responsible’ and handle this ‘like an adult’ or he could just choose violence. He’s a combative motherfucker so one option is much more appetising.

Lancer speaks up first, “if you ask me, this class should be, and in the future will be, mandatory. A core subject. It’s a matter of safety after all”. Danny points at him, “and the general knowledge is way more useful than social or math”. Lancer gives him one unimpressed look at that. Danny shrugs and waves him off, “what? Everyone has calculators in their pockets, there isn’t an app for ghosts”.

The parents decide to speak up at that. Mr. Holly scoffing sarcastically, “ah yes, this ‘ghosts’ thing”. Which tells Danny exactly what kind of head-stuck-in-the-sand motherfuckers these guys are. Mrs. Holly nods and scowls at Danny, “yes, we didn’t expect this town to be a satanic cult stronghold”. Which makes Danny cough because that was not quite what he was expecting. Even Lancer coughs and goes a little bug-eyed.

Danny blinks, “excuse me? Do you not believe in ghosts and just think this town is under the delusions of a cult?”. This was actually a new one for Danny. What the fuck.

“We believe in Jesus. Sad to say you clearly don’t, doing the devil's work. ‘Ghosts’ ‘from the afterlife’. As if those are not other words for ‘demon’ and ‘Hell’. And I am not impressed that my little girl is being allowed to be indoctrinated like this. This is why we need more support for proper Christian homeschooling”, she nods to herself with a huff. Mr. Holly nodding readily as well.

This is actually the first time Danny’s ever been called a literal demon actually. He’s been called a demon child or little devil but not literally a demon. Like, a ‘from Hell’ type demon. Should he be flattered? Maybe? Oh whatever. But choosing violence would be the ‘demonic’ thing to do right? So Danny snorts, “I mean if you wanna raise your kid badly and mess them up for adult life, go right ahead. But when your kid doesn’t know what to do during a ghost attack when we get randomly assaulted by a sentient tornado or invaded by another dragon, don’t come complaining to me. Also don’t come complaining to me when your kid moves out at seventeen and refuses to talk to you for twenty-three years”. Lancer looks like he wants to stop him and make him shut up but also really doesn’t want to. Danny’s probably a bad influence on the man. “If you don’t want to believe in ghosts, something very explicitly real unlike your unproven book god, that’s your dealio. But come on and have some decency and let your kid make up their own mind, yeah?”.

Mr. Holly blinks at him, “how old are you?”. Making Danny laugh, “physically? eighteen. Mentally? A lot older than you, clearly”. Both adults look suitably offended by that and Sophia has a tiny smile though also seems more than a little nervous. Her folks are probably the ‘my house, my rules’ and ‘I brought you into this world I can bring you out’ and ‘this is the way this family does things, so you have to as well’ types.

Mrs. Holly scoffs, “this is unbelievable”, turning around to Sophia -who has a good Poker face, which is actually kind of concerning/depressing- and snapping, “to think you’d even select such a class”. Sophia muttering, “I find it interesting”, chewing her lip a little, “and he did bring proof of them day one”. Mrs. Holly rolls her eyes, “oh yeah? What proof?”, and actively looks like she just won this conversation; which Danny is so not having.

So Danny, being Danny and the undead gremlin child that he is, shouts, “this proof!”, and proceeds to grab an ecto-apple from inside his tailcoat, smashing it down on the desk hard enough to make it explode, and grins slightly manically while the green ectoplasm juice and chunks bubble, start moving, develop eyes and mouths, start sticking up like deadman’s finger fungus, and then start shrieking.

Lancer chokes. The parents jerk and jump back, having gotten splattered slightly. Sophia just blinks wide-eyed, taking a slight step back; she was, after all, slightly more used to Danny and his general wackiness.

Danny sticks his finger in the coagulated mass of screaming green horror and starts swirling it/his finger around, grinning manically still, “proof enough fer ya?”. He does pull out a thermos and suck the stuff up when the desk starts steaming though.

The parents say nothing for a bit before Mr. Holly stammers, “we-we will n-not be deceive-deceived by a w-witch”. Which Danny snorts at, “I’ve got a friend who’s a witch, but naw, not really my thing. I prefer to chill it with the dead rather than pagan gods”, tilting his head, “though I guess some pagan gods are also ghosts so eh”, and shrugs.

Mrs. Holly scowls, turns on her heels, and leaves. Snapping, “come on Sophia”. Her husband scampering after her. Danny waves in the most fruity way he can, speaking singsong,“🎵bbbyyyyeeeeee🎵“, looking to Sophia, “see you on Monday, yeah?”. She just nods at him with a slight smile.

Mr. Lancer blinks after a bit, “Daniel… I almost feel like I need to write you up for that entire stunt”, holding up a finger while pinching his nose and leaning back in his chair, “but. You probably did the right thing”. Danny can’t help chuckling at that, “I mean, I would say I did the right thing but my opinion on my own behaviour is absolutely super-duper biased”. Lancer glares at him while he continues, “and really? not believing in ghosts is a good way to wind up dead. Better to bite that bullshit in the ass than let them think throwing holy water at Johnny would be a good idea”.

Lancer blinks, “they would likely have bad luck for the rest of their lives”. Danny nods immediately, “understatement. Kitty would send that man to her alternate kiss dimension in a heartbeat”. Lancer just stares at him a little bit, “has… has that happened to you?”.

“Happened to all of Amity’s men slash boys once”.

Lancer chooses to not respond to that.

---

“Hmmmm. I see. He is rather handling it well. Fulfilling the proper and respective duties”.

“Ah yes indeed. As… begrudging as that is to admit”.

“We’ll have to have a… conversation”.

“But of course”.

“Most unfortunate”.

“Indeed”.

“But he will accept what he’s due”.

“As he should”.

“However, we can never be sure with… that one”.

“Truly unfortunate”.

“Time and her overseer favour that one far too much”.

“And yet they are right, which is also quite unfortunate”.

“Yes. Quite”.

“Well shall we get to it?”.

“Hmmmm no. Let four nine eight and four nine one deal with that one, they are unwise yet”.

“Very well. Watcher”.

Chapter 5: I Am The Guardian Of The Knowledge! The Knowledge Guardian!

Danny is having a morning alright? Sure he had a good-ish sleep, seeing as he apparently did decently well with the parent/teacher thingy excluding the fact that the school had now acquired a religious discrimination complaint (not that the school cared). And also sure, maybe he got out of genuinely fighting Technus by humble bragging since that ghost was ‘a man of science’ and thus was a sucker for any gossip involving someone taking the piss out of religious folks. Also also, he got waffles this morning. Big plus there.

So you’d think with all that he’d be about to have an awesome morning but nope. Instead, he is currently actively running away from his consequences. Well okay, mostly flying but he can’t exactly do that once he got to school.

Danny walks briskly into the classroom and shuts the door very firmly, even going so far as to lock it a bit dramatically before turning around and giving the class an awkward smile. Heading up to the board, “alright f͜ư͘ck҉͘ę͏r͡s̛-”.

He absolutely ignores the, “Open up”, from outside the door. Chuckling very awkwardly while the class glances at the door then back to him. Danny clearing his throat, “so now that the parent-teacher stuff is outta the way and y’all proved you’re not totally stupid with the quiz and mini lab thing. Why don’t we move on to lairs and contamination-”.

“Daniel James Janus Fenton”.

Danny sighs very audibly and stares up at the ceiling for a second, everyone else quirking eyebrows, snickering, or talking at each other.

“Uhhhh, I feel like he’s using us somehow”.

“Does he seriously have two middle names?”.

Valerie grumbles to herself a bit about how she didn’t even know Danny had a second middle name.

“Better yet one of them is ‘Janus’? The Hell?”.

“Ha, serves the freak right”.

Danny clears his throat a little, “anyway, the Eyes Of Ovi Colosseum is a perfect example of a really stupid specified lair for some mouthless d͏͜į͡ck҉̸͞s҉ nitpicking over laws who think they somehow have the right to control other peoples existences”, and throws a mild glare at the door. Bunch of floating cloaked dicks.

Emilie snorts and laughs into her hand, “oooh someone’s trying to throw a little shade”.

A couple of people chuckle at the, “we have responsibilities, Daniel. Now will you allow us an attendance with you”, that speaks up from the other side of the door.

James quirks an eyebrow, “that sounded more like a threat than a ‘please let me in, dickhead’”. Earning some nods and more chuckles.

“I’m more curious who Danny pissed off enough to stand angrily outside of the ghost-proofed door”.

Danny holds up a finger, “technically, they’re cops”. Earning him a round of shocked gasps and scandalised looks of horror. Rolling his wrist, “anyway, their lair is, like, the biggest standing prison. Vortex’s in it”, shrugging, “they might have tried assassinating me once…”, Danny continues without acknowledging or explaining on that one. And yes, he mentioned it purely to piss off the Observants and rub it in just a little bit more that they failed at ending his ass.

Once the class over bell rings though… he looks around awkwardly and with a level of fake pleading, “anyone suddenly feel like staying after class?”.

Val actually humours him (which he one hundred percent expected), ditto with Emilie actually. Todd just wants any excuse to skip class that doesn’t require him doing anything legitimately bad like leaving school property. Everyone else opting to get up and head to the door, though flashing him apologetic shrugs… or smirking meanly. You’d think they’d be nicer to a guy that can affect their grades. Fucking jerks. However it is Danny who gets to smirk meanly when there is -surprise surprise- two Observants floating outside his door that all of them have to skirt around very cautiously. The Observants, for their part, completely ignore all of his fellow teens/students; instead they just stare -if eyelidless giant eyes even can stare- at him intensely. Danny waves cheekily; they feel like they’re glaring. And pretty much all the other teens that see the Observants just kind of hide around corners and observe instead of heading to their next class. Nosy shits, Danny would do the exact same. He probably shouldn’t feel proud over their want for gossip outweighing the requirement to go to class or to practice self-preservation, but he totally does.

One of the Observants lifts up a boney green hand and points at him, “we need to speak with you”. Making Danny snort, cross his arms, and lean against his desk, “yeah I think I got that one after the multi-hour stalking session”. Valerie snorts at that though she is eyeballing the Hell out of the fucking ghosts.

“Alone”.

Danny puts a hand to his chest, “aawwwww, confessing your love for me in private? How scandalous”.

The Observant on the left looks to the one on the right, “I now understand why the elders didn’t want to deal with him”. Which fine, makes Danny feel exceptionally proud of himself. Emilie laughs, “oooo, I so want to know what Danny did to hurt these poor elders' feelings or whatever”. Danny side-eyes and smirks at her, “oh only colluded with a god to break the laws of temporal displacement”.

“I can’t even tell if you’re serious”.

Danny’s smirk grows malicious, “good”, then sighing and sagging, looking back to the two Observants, “fiiiiiiine. But no, I don’t know who jailbroke whatever prisoner out. Or where Plasmius has hidden whatever artifact of rare and overwhelming power. Or-”

The Observant on the right actually has the gall to interrupt him, “you are not to blame for anything”. The left one adding on, “currently”; making Danny snort. Him then gesturing at his three ‘students’, “but can’t you see that I am busy? I mean really. Some of us actually have work to do these days”; all three teens chuckling to themselves over that while also mildly pretending to be taking notes or some shit. But with another heftily sigh Danny moves to pack his shit… very slowly. Because technically legitimately snuffing the Observants was a recipe for disaster and Lancer probably wouldn’t appreciate the school getting beset by an army of eyeball assholes purely because Danny felt like being a bastard. That… and it might actually be something mildly important; which, arguably, he shouldn’t just ignore.

Today’s turned into real shit.

Valerie quirks an eyebrow at him when he throws his backpack over his shoulder, making the tailcoat flare out a little, “are you seriously going along with a pair of ghosts”, then glaring at Danny when he rolls his eyes at her.

“Val, it’s perfectly fine. Annoying, but arguably fine”, him shrugging, “it’s not like they can harm me”, looking to the Observants and smirking meanly, “seeing as they are incapable of doing harm”, snorting, “pfffft, fucking pacifists, am I right?”. A couple of people in the hallway are noticeably stifling snickers. The Observants, for their part, just ‘stare’ silently.

Joshep shouts from the hallway, “what are all you kids doing out here?!? Get to class!”. Danny’s pretty sure that he -and the Observants- is the only one who can hear Joshep muttering, “what the Hell did that Fenton kid do now? Why does my classes have to be so close to his? Just why?”.

Danny picks that moment to walk out of his classroom, look at Joshep, and laugh very loudly and sarcastically. Joshep grimaces deeply at him, eyes the two FUCKING GHOSTS, and grimaces deeper but also with slight fear. Val, Todd, and Emilie all slip out behind Danny; Val whispering at him, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Danny”. Making him smirk, “when do I ever”; earning him some major glaring. He’d bet money on her not actually going to class and instead trying to secretively follow him ‘for his safety’.

The hallway gets real empty real fast as soon as Danny walks off with the Observants following him a bit unnecessarily close; that really only encourages him to walk slower though so HA!

Just before exiting the building Danny quickly throws Lancer a text, you know, in case the man tries to go looking for him or some shit. Joshep will probably tattle on him for ‘having pet eyeball ghosts’. Though making a pet of an Observant would be one Hell of a power move, goddamn.

Danny : 🚓🚔🚓

Let his sorta boss think of that what he will, for now, Danny’s gotta go and deal with his problems. Apparently anyways. Kinda hard to skirt ‘the law’ when said ‘law’ were ‘all-seeing’. Fuck him.

-

By the time Danny and his two personal shadows get to the Colosseum he thinks the two Observants might just be starting to get close to overdosing on puns. Probably helps that Danny’s using the shittiest, corniest, dumbest ones he can possibly think of. And to think he only got halfway through his stockpiled eyeball-themed ones!

Him glancing around the Colosseum full of Observants, and apparently ClockWork? off to the side cleaning their staff lazily. Stupid Clocky, Danny so could have used a heads up; throwing them a quick pout -which they smirk slightly over- before looking up at Watcher, the head Observant. Putting his hands in his pockets, “soooooo? The fucks up, extra-large eyeball”.

Watcher leaves him hanging for a little bit before speaking up and Danny can practically hear the reluctance and regret in their voice, “Daniel James Janus Fenton Phantom, I’m certain it should come as no surprise to you that we are well aware of your recently acquired… position, as well as how your performance has tracked”.

Danny snorts, “so what? You fucks care about mortal realm teaching now? Isn’t that shit, you know, beneath you or whatever? Not that I actually care. Go ahead and get your knickers in knots about whatever the fuck you wanna. But this?-”, gesturing around lazily, “-seems a little excessive as retaliation for educating mortals. Dramatic as fuck, which mild props there I guess, but still-”.

Watcher cutting him off, “this is not a punishment, as you’ve already been made aware-”. Danny flips him off for that jab. “-rather your… position makes you qualified and befitted of another”.

What.

No seriously, what the fuck?

Danny blinks and tilts his head, “are you trying to also give me a job offer?”; the fuck is wrong with people and springing sudden surprise job offers for shit he is almost definitely largely not qualified for. Though fine, Danny as Phantom had a fuck tone of qualifications here in the Zone. Fuck, he even technically had right to claim the High Throne!

Watcher almost sighs and glances up for a split second, “the answer to your question is neither affirmative nor contradicting. You have taken actions no other has and doing so with more than just marginal success. As such you are the only being fulfilling the role of educating mortals and working through those means to ease the strained and threatening relationship between our realms-”.

Danny jumps in at that, throwing his hands out to the side, “you’re only now just noticing that?!? I’ve been pretty well doing that since the beginning!”. ClockWork holds up a finger, “but was that out of choice or necessity? And were any instances of you actually being educational simply accidents while you were doing what you do best?”, nodding to themselves almost smugly, “I think we both know the answer there, Daniel”; Danny rolls his eyes though blushes a little. Damn it, Clocky.

Watcher doesn’t actively acknowledge ClockWork -which he’s sure ClockWork’s gonna use as an excuse to fuck with them later. Fuck, they might be fucking with them right now- instead continuing to speak at Danny, “you are being granted a position of Ambassador and Sovereign Wisdom, Guardian of the passing of wisdom between the two realms”.

Danny blinks, oh my Ancients. Okay yes ClockWork was absolutely involved in this and the Observants are absolutely not happy about this. Guardians were BIG FUCKING DEALS. The High Sovereign was basically the only one above Guardians. Well and technically the Observants, but that was debatable. Danny snorts, “wow you guys must really hate yourselves. Here I thought you didn’t want me having more power?”. He can feel multiple glares.

Watcher themselves seemingly glares, “while that still stands, what is earned is earned and what is due is due. And while a Guardian of this variety is not necessary, it is beneficial to the realm and future. And, begrudgingly, you do it well”. Danny has to roll his eyes at that, the Observants and their ‘for the betterment of the future’, that got old before he even met them. He does actually put on his more serious face/posture when Watcher floats down to be more on level with him. “so will you accept?”.

“What, in any world, would make you think I’d say no? You don’t have to beg me, you bunch of eyeball crybabies?”. Like really? HE WAS ALREADY DOING THE ‘JOB’. The only reason he didn’t take the High Throne was the added boatloads of responsibilities; that, and he’d have to spend so much time here that he might as well just live in the Zone… not happening anytime soon.

“Very well”. Watcher raises a hand and waves it, a sceptre forming next to their hand floating in the air before it starts moving towards him slowly. Danny decides to leave Watcher hanging and mildly admire the black Arbutus wood with glowing blue carvings across it, legit looked pretty hecking cool. Clocky’s stiff pinstriped staff design wouldn’t exactly suit Danny’s quirkiness. The prehnite crystal on top was a definitively spooky pale opac green with green glowing falling feathers inside; at least the green in green didn’t look weird.

Danny shrugging after a bit and reach out to grab it, the three little silver bells secured by blue leather rope surrounding the crystal chiming slightly from the jostling. Danny furrowing his brows a little and sniffing at said bells; ignoring the twitching in his limbs from connecting to the artifact. Huh, well that smells a heck of a lot like sandalwood and frankincense; eh there was probably some inside. Danny is absolutely blaming the dangling red and green feathers on Ghost Writer giving him a fucking quill though.

Shrugging Danny leans the thing lazily on his shoulder and pointedly makes a point to not react even slightly to the weird pulsing come from in towards his core. Little uncomfortable but not nearly as uncomfortable as being impaled by a giant fishhook. Or mauled by a tiger. Or watching his dad disco dance in public. Little more uncomfortable than Lancer’s attempts to be ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ and ‘relatable’.

Danny thinks he’s being glared at again. ClockWork is absolutely smirking in the stands. Danny also not reacting to a cloak magically poofing into existence attached to his neck is probably annoying the Observants even more. Ha, suck on that. He is the unphaseable one! Phased by nothing! Who is also apparently king of knowledge! Lord of knowing! Yet stupid enough to show up with his clothes backwards more than once (how the fuck did he accidentally wear a jacket backwards and not notice it? Seriously self. Gosh). He does glance at the cloak though, lifting up one side judgingly. Chuckling, “black with blue stitching? What? No green to accent my eyes?”.

“We do not choose the appearance”.

Danny rolls his eyes, “yeah no fucking shit. Blue’s an educational, or whatever the fuck, colour”, tilting his head, “and Lancer’s why I even know that. Huh”. Poetry symbolism was useful for something he guesses. Oh and the clasp is a quill, goddamn that Ghost Writer. Fuck. He’s definitely ignoring whatever symbolism might be behind the slightly bondage harness-looking triple straps going across his chest, he doesn’t want to know honestly. The hood tip zig-zagging like a lightning bolt is supremely obvious though. Like, painfully obvious. patting it a little and looking back to the Observant, “so this all the shit? Don’t feel like fucking with my half-life any further?”.

Watcher almost audibly sighs, turns to borderline glare at ClockWork, “dress your child, ClockWork”. ClockWork grins and pretends not to hear them for a second before floating down.

Danny is perfectly content to let his ClockPops ruffle up his hair, both of them side-eyeing Watcher with mean smirks while ClockWork boops Danny on the cheek with their staff; Danny letting their energy mess with his appearance more than willingly. Suddenly his tailcoat is on him in ghost form, which yeah feels a little weird. An (ecto-ha) green frilled poet blouse underneath with little cufflinks that have ghost pipes (ha!) on them. Crushed black velvet trousers, straight cut and wide/baggy. Silver armoured boots and gloves, which fine, he’s a combative motherfucker. He can also feel some shit going on with his hair, a quick pat-down proving that apparently ClockWork decided he needed some flowers in his hair. Goddamn better be ghost pipes. Danny chuckling, “nice, Clocky”; they smirk lightly and fondly at him.

“But of course, Daniel”.

Watcher does their little hand-wavey glittery thingy taking an in-time ‘photo’ of him to send out through the realm, because bitch there be a new Guardian. Danny just chuckles, “can I go now?”.

“We’d prefer you did”.

Danny snorts, throws a peace sign and finger guns before just fucking off entirely. Him turning away to stalk off making the cloak swish in the air which reveals that the end is, like, curled up into something resembling a scroll. Fucking symbolism, Ancients.

-

Turning human when he gets back reveals the cloak changes to light blue with black stitching, well that’s convenient. Seeing as technically he’s supposed to wear the thing whenever he’s doing his ‘job’ so it changing with his forms is probably for the best. Phantom’s the Ambassador, Fenton’s the Sovereign Wisdom. Plus wearing a cloak to school is totally a weird quirky thing to do, which is perfectly up his alley. Sick as shit too. He’s gonna wear the hood down while human, up and tucked right behind his ears while Phantom; just for that little added difference. Danny had some sense of self-preservation. His clothing is still exactly what his ClockPops gave him… well okay the shoes look slightly more dress shoey than like straight-up knight's boots; eh that’s probably for the best too. Less noisy. And a head pat-down shows that the flowers have gone, good seeing as Sam would mock him relentlessly otherwise.

Whelp, he’s going home now. Because fuck doing anything else. Seriously. A quick check of his phone, however, reveals that Lancer actually got back to him.

Lance: for future reference, Daniel, please reframe from ‘getting ghost arrested’ during school hours.

Lance: I would appreciate a call, after hours of course.

Danny chuckles and shakes his head a little, eh might as well do that on his walk home. “Sup, Lance. I do not have another arrest on my record and I also did not destroy another jail”.

“I do hope that is not sarcastic, but I’m glad you’re alright from the sounds of it”.

Danny snorts, kicking a rock down the road, “nope. No sarcasm here. Perfectly fine. Just had to stand and talk in front of an entire colosseum of ghost cops slash judges and get my sentence”, snickering to himself, “now see that was sarcastic. Well, mostly. Really it was just me getting acknowledgement, or whatever, for basically teaching ‘the mortals’”.

That actually gets Lancer laughing a little, “well my job offer was never meant to get you in trouble or cause you hassle, though I doubt you mind much”.

Danny huffs and rolls his eyes, glaring at the stoplight to hurry the fuck up, “considering this let me annoy the absolute fuck out of the Observants? Zone no I don’t mind. Also I have a cloak now, that I am required to wear. So have fun with that school uniform upgrade”.

“Oh? I can’t wait to see, Daniel. I’m sure you’ll make the appearance work, so long as you don’t show up in a hazmat jumpsuit”.

Okay that one Danny has to laugh at, loudly, “yeah, no, that’ll never happen!”. He might love his suit but wearing anything remotely similar while human was just begging for trouble. Actively and explicitly.

“Good, good. Now I’m sure after all that excitement you’ve got work to do, so since I know you’re fine I’ll let you go”.

Danny smirks, “oh Ancients no, I’m going to bed and napping like the dead”.

“Bye, Daniel”.

Danny chuckles as the man hangs up, got ‘em with the death jokes.

---

Sam snickers and pokes Danny on the cheek, him flipping around in the air to avoid her prodding fingers, pouting at her, “meanie”. Now some may wonder why is she pestering him? well because an early morning flight revealed that the flower hair was still a thing and was likely to be a permanent thing at that. Fun. And he can’t even really be mad, because it’s basically a gift from Clocky. Ever rare and always cherished… by him at least.

Tucker goes and flicks one, “at least they’re ghostly”. Earning an eyeroll from Danny, “har har har, though fully agreed”, looking to Sam, “I am so looking forward to a confused and panicked call from Vlad. Because this-”, gesturing to his entire body, which while is back to his jumpsuit, he is still rocking the cloak and the staff’s stuck in a little solid prehnite ring, “-is not ‘standard halfa physical changes’ and we know how Vlad pays waaaaaaay too much attention to my physical appearance”.

Sam barks a laugh, “he pays more attention than you do”.

“In my defence, Vladdie’s got all the time in the world to be a weird nosey bastard. I, however, am a busy busy man”.

Tucker puts a hand to his chest, “if only you could work from home like me”; earning him a smack over the head from Sam. Danny just chuckles, transforming back human and planting his one good foot on the ground, “that’s only because they decided you’d be too much of a security and safety threat otherwise”.

“That changes nothing”.

Danny throwing his arms around their shoulders as they walk into the school. The administration just ignores them and doesn’t even try to force his two friends to get visitors badges, knew a lost cause when they saw one. Danny glances from one to another, “so you two just sitting in for funsies?”.

Sam rolls her eyes while Tucker chuckles, “Hell yeah why not”. Which Danny just laughs at while using their shoulders as support to lift himself off the ground, swing his legs up, and double kicks open his classroom door.

Ashley jumps, startled, and joins the rest of the class in staring at him before muttering, “Uh, how is it that we’re almost always here slightly before you”.

Danny scoffs, “because I’m chill like that”, while his friends carry him to and drop him into his seat before wandering to the back of the classroom. Danny holds up a finger, “also-”, throwing his one leg up onto the desk, gesturing at his armoured ‘dress shoes’ because yes, he’s still wearing Clocky’s gifts, “-I broke my leg in three separate places this morning. Fun, I know, no need to be jealous. Also got in a little light stabbing because I may have put a little too much effort into sassing someone”.

Valerie sighs very audibly and painfully, “Danny, why? Just why?”, she has long since learned to not care all that much about his injuries. His contamination whisked them away like magic anyway.

Emilie snorts, “I’m more interested in the fucking cloak”. Which Amber absolutely chimes in on, “talk about a fashion don't”. Danny points at her, “hey f̵̶uc̡k̶͝͞ you”; earning more than a couple laughs. Danny shrugging, “anyway, cloaky grants me special knowledge powers so I am officially ‘wise’”. That gets him an eraser to the head, which Danny ignores as he keeps talking, “the ghosties decided that teaching you ghost thingies is officially my job”.

Valerie stares at him, “… but that’s already your job”. Danny shrugs, “eh ghosts like to feel superior”.

Dash throws his hands out, completely derailing the conversation, “what? Are you not going to pink slip Jesse for the eraser?”. Danny smirks at his former bully, “nope. I do have one with your name on it if you’d like though”. Dash scowls at him and Tucker’s laughter is absolutely a bit loud. Which gets James’s attention, him turning to the two, “and what about you two? Why are you here?”. Sam smirks, “living crutches”. Which really should have been the obvious answer to everyone.

Danny beams, “yup! Waaaaay better than some s͟h̴̛it҉t̛y̵̧͜ wood. And yes I got hired by ghosts to do the thing that I already got hired by humans to do, am I changing the lesson plans because of that? Haha f͞u̴͜͟c͏͝k no. Now as for class, we’re gonna talk forbidden knowledge because I am feeling petty”. Which yes, people laugh at.

-

Barely halfway through Charles just kind of barges in, fuck Danny needs to redo his booby traps. Charles looking him up and down, smirking, “oh I so had to see this. Tell me you are starting a cult without telling me you’re starting a cult”. Danny blinks hard at that before bursting out laughing, pointing at him and deadpanning, “yes”.

Emilie beams and sits up straight, “oh we should absolutely all wear cloaks now, Hell yeah”. Amber glares at her, “I’d rather drop out”. Valerie just rolls her eyes at the preppy girl.

Danny looks to the girls, “a couple Christians have already made it their mission to report me daily for satanic indoctrination so that would have some interesting end results”. Charles chuckles, “oh this so is a cult, and if you were a spawn of satan I wouldn’t even be surprised”, then quickly closes the door.

Dale chuckles awkwardly, “I think one thing this class has taught me is that Mr. Trent is way weirder than I thought”. Danny snorts, “oh you have no idea, the things that man has asked me”. He also had a feeling the man tried to break into his house/bedroom once because he got over-excited about some curiosity of his. Shrugging, “back to illegal dealings with guardians and how our mayors a d̶̢i̶͠c̶̨͝k҉͏w͢e̷͟a͏şl̛͘e͘…”.

He doesn’t even get to speak for ten minutes before fucking Vlad bursts in. Danny really needs to re-booby trap that fucking door. Damn. Too bad Vladdie wasn’t in ghost form, then the anti-ghost coating on the door would have at least done something to keep out the rich nutter.

“Daniel, what the Gouda have you gotten yourself involved in now?”.

Danny looks to him slowly, gestures to his class dramatically, “excuse you, frootloop? I mean, timing. But Ancients, chill your tits. Could this not wait twenty f͜͟u̶̕c̸̢͝kin̸g̢̨ minutes? f͞u̴͜͟c͏͝k”. Vlad just glares at him.

Dash leans over to Dale, “the Zone is the mayor doing here?”. Dale just shrugs. Todd snickers meanly, “maybe Danny pissed him off too, because the mayor sure as shit isn’t here to see your shitty ass, Dash”.

“Fuck you”.

“Screw off, Todd”.

Todd just smirks smugly to himself instead of responding to either jock.

Emilie snickers, “maybe he felt Danny talking about him and was summoned”.

Sam smirks to herself, inspects her nails, and deadpans, “it’s cult powers”. Which lots of people actually make ‘ahhh’ and ‘hmmm’ and other understanding agreeing sounds at.

Vlad scowls at the goth, “oh nothing so drab or petty”, actually walking up to Danny and lifting up the cloak, “I am talking of this”. Looking to Danny, “butter biscuits, Daniel”.

Danny snorts, “no I will not butter your biscuits”. Vlad absolutely subtly shoots him with an ecto-beam in his good legs knee. Fucker. Danny rolling his eyes, “the Observants are occasionally tolerable… tolerable-ish. And are occasionally capable of being mildly decent… decent-ish”. Vlad stares at him for a bit before shaking his head, “your desire to be tortured out of existence truly amazes me”, smirking, “if you wanted to suffer you could just fill out a request and I’d be happy to appease you”.

Valerie coughs and actively spits out some water. Dale quirks an eyebrow, “did… did the mayor just threaten to torture Danny?”.

Emilie starts cackling, “yes, yes he did!”.

Danny waves everyone off, “oh please, this is tame and lame”, looking back to Vlad, “I would but only if I could get payment in the form of feeding your internal organs to your cat”. Vlad actually chuckles faintly at that and shakes his head almost fondly. Pulling on his suit jacket to straighten it, “well I guess you’re perfectly well, albeit stupid, but well. I’ll leave you to your… duties”.

“It’s only a duty if I make someone crap their pants”.

Vlad actually stops with his hand on the doorknob at that, looking back, “a poop joke, Daniel? Really?”. Danny just smirks and finger guns while Vlad leaves.

Danny glancing at the clock, “whelp, continuing this class is pointless”, shrugging and looking around at everyone, “I’m honestly amazed this hasn’t already come up yet but me and Vladdie have a very interesting family dynamic”.

Which results in multiple shouted, “FAMILY!?!?!?!?”, comments from everyone.

Valerie rolls her eyes and glances around, “he’s Danny’s godfather”. Danny beams and nods, “yup! And that I’m his chosen heir”.

Dash stares and mutters, “what the fuck”, at that; which, fair. Danny just chuckles meanly at him while the bell rings.

Amber walks up to him through, twirling her hair a little, “so are you, like, rich?”. Danny can absolutely tell people are taking their time to leave class just to hear his response. So Danny smirks, “whole fam is. FentonWorks makes a lot of money. Plus! the government pays us”.

Dale looks almost horrified and Dash is just muttering, “what the fuck”, to himself repeatedly. Amber shaking her head, “well you coulda said something”. Which Danny tolls his eyes at.

Sam doesn’t let him respond though, her snapping, “and what? Have all you people liking and ‘befriending’ him purely because of something so goddamn shallow? As if. Danny -Ancients we are better than that”. Amber, Dash, and Dale all make offended noises; Emilie and Todd can be heard laughing out in the hall. Fuck, Danny’s pretty sure he even hears Hanna loudly cackling out there and she’s not even in his class or even still in school still. Here to hang out with Emilie perhaps? Danny just keeps on smirking as everyone finally leaves and his door clicks shut.

Is he surprised when Vlad suddenly regains visibility next to his desk with crossed arms? Ancients no, fully fucking expected. Even Tuck and Sam are unphased, though they do chuckle to themselves a little while glaring mistrustfully at the man. Danny sighs and looks to the man, “Vlad, I’m fine”, gesturing around at the empty classroom, “all of this just apparently made me qualified to become a Guardian, a Guardian of knowledge”.

Vlad scowls at that.

“And also apparently I’m the ambassador of ghosts now?”.

Now that makes Vlad blink, “and you weren’t already?”.

“That’s what I said!”, waving a hand dismissively at Vlad, “it’s not like you were going to do that”.

Vlad shakes his head, “indeed”, frowning, “but ‘Guardian’? Really, Daniel”. Tucker coughs into his hand, “oooh someone's jealous”. Vlad barely dignifies that with a quick glare.

Danny shrugs, “eh it is what it is”, finger gunning, “but don’t you worry, Vladdie, I’ve still got that claim to the High Throne”.

“Unfortunate”.

Danny laughs, “to you maybe”, summoning out his staff from the ring and holding it lazily behind his neck to rest his head on it, “but for now I do the shitty duty of teaching”. Vlad glares at him for that repeat joke/joke reference. It was pretty crappy, ha ha.

Vlad purses his lips after a second, “well I could lend my expertise in that regard-”.

Danny snorts and cuts him off, “trying to ‘get in the good graces of a Guardian’ will not get you out of the very bad graces of the Observants”.

Vlad rolls his eyes though seems slightly disappointed, “as if my reasons would be so people-pleasing. You know I’m not the type”.

Sam audibly scowls, “oh we know”.

Danny, however, grins meanly, “now you can certainly be a guest speaker just to piss them off”, holding up a finger, “let’s make it about ghost portals and the effect they’ve had between realms”.

Vlad smirks at him, “you are playing with fire, dear boy”. Danny knows the man’s going to make his folks look bad, but honestly? hurting his parents' reputation was impossible and no one would be even slightly surprised. Also yes, he’s aware that basically having the two halfas discuss the very thing that made them halfas was actively asking for it. Sam and Tuck shake their heads in the background while halfa and halfa shake hands.

(Informing Lancer of this resulted in him genuinely questioning if Danny and Vlad were getting along these days, so guess Lancer also noticed his hostility towards the mayor, not that that was hard. Lancer was a bit confused by the fact that the town mayor was into the ecto-sciences though).

---

Apparently Charles, and maybe Danny’s entire class, took the ‘cult’ thing a little too seriously or maybe just had a little too much fun with the idea over the next week because now he’s been called into Lancer’s office to talk about starting a cult. Fuck.

Danny poking his head in and waving awkwardly, “heeeeeeey Lance-y”. Lancer just glares at him and sighs deeply, so Danny goes and takes a seat, “soooooo, I swear I didn’t actually start a cult this time”.

Lancer quirks an eyebrow, “‘this time’?”.

“Eh, it’s happened”. At Lancer’s pained expression Danny adds on, “hey, you knew full well what you were getting into. I keep reminding you of this”.

“And yet you keep one-upping yourself”. Danny finger guns and winks at that. Lancer shakes his head, “regardless, yes I’ve been getting a lot of concerned calls regarding cult behaviour. Though some are clearly just taking any excuse to complain about you specifically”.

“Yeah a lot of adult adults really hate my guts for some reason”.

“I couldn’t imagine why that would be, Daniel”. Lancer shakes his head again before digging in his desk and pulling out some papers, “so now you and I are going to be making up letters addressing this and sending them out to all the parents”.

Danny’s sags back in his chair and groans, “ah come on, man! This is Charles’s fault! Not mine!”.

“I’m sure you encouraged it”.

Danny gives a very petulant and pouty, “…maybe”, perking up a little, “but so did literally everyone else”.

“Students can get away with it, you, as a teacher, can not”.

Danny pouts at him again, “boo. Boo to you”. Which gets him glared at before Lancer hands him letters to work on. This is gonna suck ass. Fuck him.

-

Did writing up letters suck? YES. MAJORLY. But Danny was honestly cackling now seeing as Lancer let him read all the complaint letters. Some claiming he was certainly coding classes with hidden satanic messages of murder to increase the ghost population. Others claiming he was teaching them to torture people; which wasn’t entirely wrong, how to harm a ghost could be also used to torture them or a human technically. And a couple claiming he WAS a ghost, which was just straight-up true. There was two insisting that a priest needs to be present for his classes, which fuck no; he’s already had one too many run-ins with holy-water-rosary-clutching types.

Danny leaning back and chuckling, “people are crazy”.

“Coming from you?”.

Danny points at Lancer, “hey, crazy knows crazy”. Lancer puts his hands up in surrender.

---

Did Danny feel like having a guy who arguably could have actually become a cult leader if he wanted to guest speak the day after the letters went out was actively being spiteful? Yes. Though the fact that this happened on the day that Walker curb stomped his throat also felt spiteful. (Was Danny wearing crust punk pants again today? Absolutely, purely because of the multiple anti-cop patches on it). Danny clearing his throat painfully and using his quill to write on the board, ‘cheese head will be doing the talkie walkie today. Don’t play with portals kids’, and draws an arrow pointing at Vlad before sticking the thing back into his hair.

At least half the class quirks their eyebrows at him so he croaks out, “got throat curb-stomped by the po-po”. Vlad chuckles, “your timing is impeccable”. Danny flips him off while putting a little triangle of paper on the side of his desk reading ‘return books here ditto with the essay thingies on them’. Surprisingly almost all of them were undamaged. Val’s was a little singed and stained, Dash’s had a coffee ring on the cover, and Dale’s looked like it had been burned on a stove element; but Todd’s literally had the pages all torn out of the hardcover, it was obviously intentional.

Vlad eyes the stack for a second before actually addressing everyone, while the class tries not to be weird -or actively tries to murder him with her mind in Valerie’s case- over the mayor freaking Vlad Master, near richest man on the planet, teaching their freaking class. “For those of you that don’t know, which I imagine is all of you, I worked with Daniel’s parents in the ecto-field back in college”. That earns the man a round of coughs and disbelieving staring. Danny just nods to confirm the man’s statement.

Vlad speaks sounding truly pained, “Jack couldn’t make anything that didn’t go horribly wrong if his life depended on it, and that’s how he got me sent to the hospital for seven years with ecto-acne and didn’t even bother to visit”.  Danny has to try really hard not to laugh at him. “I will find and force-fed you nails if you say anything, Daniel”. Which honestly just makes it harder not to mock the man relentlessly.

Todd speaks up for him though, “wow sounds like someone’s pissy, bet it was your fault actually”. Vlad glares at him, “coming from a child who’s going to get abducted by a man who wears glasses and a ratty scarf tonight”. Everyone gives Vlad some very confused looks and Danny has to put his head down and wheeze slightly painfully into his desk. This was a good idea. Also a horrible one, but whatever.

Vlad shakes his head, “Jack was the one who decided to power up a prototype ghost portal in my face, I will have you know”. Danny sticks up a finger and mutters, “diet pop in filtrator”. Earning a glance from Vlad, “that fudging imbecile”.

Emilie snickers, “I think the mayor hates Danny’s dad just a little bit”. More than a couple fellow teens nod.

Vlad then goes and erases Danny’s whiteboard writing and draws out an over detailed diagram of a man made protal and a natural one. Danny rolls his eyes at the overkill, but Vlad was nothing if not highly excessive. Who shows up to ‘teach’ in a fucking Armenian suit? Danny’s pretty sure the buttons are solid rubies, like, for Ancients sake.

“Natural or artificial some basic rules, that even the simple-minded can follow, are the same. Don’t create a portal in front of someone’s face. Don’t walk inside of one and then activate it-”. Danny doesn’t so much as move when Vlad smacks the side of his head, ever since Vlad found out that that was how Danny half-died the crazy nutter has given him shit for it at every opportunity. So he saw the head smack coming a mile away.

Dale chuckles, “looks like Danny’s a dumbass”. Dash snickering meanly, “what’s new”. Danny absolutely holds up a pink slip over that. “Oh come on!”, Dash sags in his desk grumpily; you’d think the guy would learn. Vlad’s just smirking faintly before continuing, “don’t walk through randomly. And don’t tie a string to it and another person in an attempt to make the portal follow them”, Vlad smacks Danny over the head again. Danny has a feeling Vlad’s annoyed with him today for some reason. It couldn't possibly be that Danny replaced the water in his water bed with wet cement just before he went to bed two days ago, could it? Never mind, Danny knows that is exactly why. Fuck that was funny.

“Hey, it worked”.

“It really should not have, Daniel”.

“Cloning also shouldn’t work yet here we are”.

Vlad glares at him but continues talking at everyone, “another basic rule is that if the portal is any colour other than green, leave it alone; the town and I will not cover whatever happens if you don’t…”.

Vlad actually manages to get to go on for a while without being actively petty towards Danny or starting a mild bickering match with him. Danny’s honestly a little impressed. Vlad also gets almost overexcited repeatedly, very much proving he’s a scientist at heart while also clearly forgetting he’s talking to teenagers; more than a few things clearly go over everyone’s head. Val still looks like she’s plotting murder though; Danny can admire the tenacity.

But when Danny straightens out a bit from his ghost sense going off Vlad sighs, picks him up by his cloak collar and just walks him to stick out the window, unceremoniously dropping him. Danny screaming, “WHAT THE FU̢C̶͞҉K͟! FU̢C̶͞҉K͟ YOU!”, as he falls and hits the bushes below with a thud. Vlad leaning his head out to reply, “you were going to leave anyways, thought I would simply hurry the whole process up. I do know how lazy and tardy you can be”.

“I WILL PISS IN YOUR FRIDGES FANCY ICE-MAKING COMPARTMENT!”.

Vlad doesn’t dignify that with a response, instead turning back to the class with a smirk, “so on how to topple the ghost government…”. The class stares at him in shock and amusement at the sudden subject change. Valerie just stares with even more hatred now knowing full well he set her up during the Pariah incident when he gave her that ring. She does throw an ‘are you okay’ text to Danny though, which he responded with ‘I smell like bush’ to.

What’s really sad is that Danny got dropped in a bush from the second story of a building because the Box Ghost was having a lovers quarrel with The Lunch Lady in the park. By the time Danny got there it had descended into a full-blown food fight involving boxed-only foods. More than a few townsfolk had even joined in, and honestly? Danny said fuck it -not out loud ‘cause fuck his throat still hurt- and just joined in the chaos.

Vlad could handle a class of teenagers and if the man tried anything then Val wouldn’t hesitate to outright commit attempted murder.

Did Boxy win the food fight? No, obviously not. The Lunch Lady wasn’t super powerful but she still outclassed The Box Ghost’s ass. Danny finger gunning at the box-themed man who’s currently covered in crackers, “I’d buy her something nice before she decides to fill all your boxes with enough meat to make them rounded”. The Box Ghost looks completely scandalised and insulted, “you don’t think she would”.

“Oh she would, Boxy. She absolutely would”. Considering that women caused a meat tsunami purely because Sam wouldn’t eat meat…

The Box Ghost flies off in a hurry and Danny gets to back to his class with literal armfuls of boxed goods. He also got to discover that Vlad could not handle a class of teens who were now discussing how to overthrow Vlad from the mayoral office to the mains dismay and insult. Vlad looking at him, “your students are demons. Suiting”. Danny just chucked a box of frootloops at him.

(Apparently and according to the Ghost Writer, the Observants went and gave Walker shit for interfering with his Guardian duties. Danny was absolutely tickled green by this news. The Ghost Writer, however, was not happy about Todd’s apparent intentional destruction of a book; Danny doesn’t envy Todd who did, in fact, get abducted that night).

Chapter 6: Feather Quills And ‘Tests’ To Fill

“Danny, you’re overthinking this”.

Danny sighs and leans back in his chair, groaning very loudly at his bedroom ceiling before looking to his sister, who was, as per usual, attempting to be helpful… helpful-ish. “But this is the final, it’s kinda a big fucking deal. And considering how fucking splendidly I usually did on those things, how the FUCK am I writing one up? Plus, like, how do I condense this shit? Do you know how many subjects I wound up covering? Too fucking many!”.

Jazz hums encouragingly at him so he just keeps on ranting, which was probably exactly what she wanted.

Danny gesturing a hand around wildly, “ecto-biology, ecto-linguistics, ecto-medicare, ecto-history slash ecto-culture, ecto-psychology slash ecto-behaviouralism, ecto-literature, ecto-mechanics… Too fucking many”, sighing and sagging, “also pretty sure I just made up, like, all those names”.

Jazz giggles a little, “ecto-Medicare is accurate, though I have a feeling you explained far more than just treating ecto-burns or regular ecto-contamination”. Danny snaps his fingers at her, “well obviously, might as well teach the fuckers how to treat a ghost and not just humans affected by ecto stuff”.

“A roundabout way to achieve self-preservation. Should any of them stumble across an injured Phantom”.

Danny pointing aggressively at her, “hey, none of that”. Jazz just could not chill it with the psychoanalysing. She just grins at him like she’s done nothing wrong. Him sighing again and just staring up at his ceiling, randomly mentally drawing out the constellations his glow-in-the-dark ceiling stars made.

Jazz getting up and ruffling his head jerks him out of his ceiling watching though, “hey!”, him flailing his hands around to shoo her off which, as per usual, just makes her giggle at him fondly; which he absolutely pouts at her over. Her speaking up after a bit, “you know, if you find a proper written test so annoying you could just simply do something more unconventional”, her beaming a bit smugly, “my advanced abnormal psychology prof didn’t even make a final at all”.

Danny rolls his eyes, “yeah but that’s university, they can do that. And as awesome as it is that you got to start break early, they should have kept you”, and smirks while she shoves him one.

“Now that was just mean, Danny”. Shaking her head and going back to sitting on his bed, “but I am serious. Do a final project, or just an essay”.

Danny glares slightly, “essays as finals are the goddamn worst, I would never”; she rolls her eyes at that.

“I prefer them actually”, nodding to herself, “far more room for exploring ideas and showing your prof your personality”.

Danny grumbling, “more like how to really rub it in when someone doesn’t know everything perfectly”. Sighing after a bit, because she did have a point. Tests were fucking bullshit and did a shitty ass job of doing literally anything other than telling how good someone’s short-term memory was. Becoming more opinionated about how schools do schooling is one side-effect of this teacher thing that he so did not see coming. Eh whatever, not like he isn’t right. But what the fuck else can he even do? What could even qualify as ‘finals’ worthy? He sure as shit isn’t doing oral presentations, those things were like a mild form of torture… unless you were a drama kid, which Danny was not. Sure he didn’t have to worry about whatever the fuck being an absolute clusterfuck because a regular-ass test would be a clusterfuck anyway since he basically covered the ghostly version of EVERYTHING, EVERY SUBJECT AVAILABLE IN SCHOOL… except math. Fuck math. What kind of nightmare test jumps from laws of an alternate death dimension to ghostly art? Ghost hunger followed right up by portal safety? Plus, does he even remember everything he taught? Ha ha FUCK NO! What, in any world, would make anyone think otherwise. A ‘project’ would totally help deal with that issue. Grumbling, “how would I even have a project that covers everything?”.

Jazz humming to herself and tapping her chin, “well you could have them go fishing for blob ghosts through a portal?”.

Danny blinks a bit harshly, what the fuck? Looking to her, “Jazz… what the Zone kind of Uni friends have you been making?”. Though he guesses that anything involving blob ghosts would cover a tone of shit. And it’s not like he hasn’t talked a literal fuck ton about blob ghosts. They were like a go-to example/comparison tool.

Jazz shrugs, “my dorm-mate likes to fish dangerous fish”. Danny just blinks, well that sorta? explained it. Sorta.

“What kinda fish”.

“She kept a displayed piranha”.

Danny whistles at that, damn, “guess Amity’s not the only land of crazies”. She laughs a little at that and nods with slightly crinkled eyes.

Danny uses his foot to push himself around in his chair, grumbling incoherently to himself. He did kinda like the idea of dragging blob ghosts into his problems, but taking people portal fishing -snort- was just ridiculous even by his standards. Not that Charles hadn’t ‘gone fishing’ in his desk to get his hands on one; yes Danny’s still a little miffed about that, but hey, at least the man kept his grubby hands out of his desk ever since.

Blinking, wait a fucking minute…

Grinning, Danny stops spinning and loudly slams his hands down on his desk repeatedly, “HA! Pet ghosts!”. Jazz shakes her head good-naturedly, “not sure the school will go for an adopt-a-ghost program as a final”.

Danny points at her and snaps his fingers repeatedly and a bit excitedly, “no no no no no no. Blob ghosts. Catch your own blob ghost. Keeping It ‘alive’ would cover almost everything, catching It would cover most else, and naming It, like, a ghost name in ghost speak could be the whipped cream on top!”.

“Danny, how are you going to get all the parents to even agree to that?”. Glaring at him when he smirks, “without abusing overshadowing”. Danny actively pouts at that. He does have an actual answer though, “oddly most of them take me seriously or respect me some. Weird, I know”, sighing slightly and tilting his head, “Sophia’s still hate my guts though”.

Jazz laughs at him, “so what you’re saying is that they are not going to approve”.

“When does everyone ever approve of the shit I do? Get the majority vote and everyone else can just suck it up”.

“See that is likely part of why they apparently hate you”.

Danny flips her off for that one.

Jazz shaking her head and getting up, “regardless, feel like treating your very proud big sister to dinner?”. Danny rolls his eyes fondly and sighs like this is just so much effort and such a massive hassle while getting up, “fine. But we’re going to the Soup And Ham Can because their coffee’s good”. That earns him an eye roll right back as they head out of his room.

---

Now see Danny wasn't stupid or mean, he damn well looked around town to make sure that a bunch of teens could feasibly capture some blob ghosts… without ghostly superpowers. And yeah he also did the responsible thing of actually doing the proper paperwork which made him feel super old and simultaneously like he was too young to do this kind of shit. He’s eighteen and ‘doing paperwork’? Fuck. It so didn’t help that he accidentally complained about paperwork around Vlad, which turned into the elder halfa complaining about his own paperwork; which both of them got just mildly weirded out by. Vlad still thought of him as a child after all, and Vlad was absolutely an old man in Danny’s eyes. It was fucking weird. Vlad did get a little smug about Danny ‘being like him because there’s no way that fool Jack did any paperwork’, which did cause the entire encounter to turn into a minor fistfight. Regardless of the man being right or not.

At least Danny was stronger than the man these days, and both of them were well aware of that. Which honestly? might be part of why Vlad chilled the fuck out.

Anyway, said paperwork that’s making him feel old is absolutely why he’s getting an early morning Lancer call. Has to be. Unless Danny absentmindedly destroyed something without knowing it… which was always a fair possibility.

“Daniel, I’ll admit this is probably the most interesting request I’ve ever received as a finals alternative and I can’t say I’m particularly surprised that you’d rather forgo a formal written final”.

Danny snickering and leaning against the park's water fountain, “hey you know me, I like to keep things lively in the deadly kinda way”.

“And so long as blob ghosts aren’t capable of being deadly then I don’t see a reason to deny this. But this can not interfere with other classes, as in, they can not bring ‘awesome pet ghosties’ to their other classes”.

Danny snorts at that, yeah no fucking shit, “well duh, Lance. That would be asking for trouble especially with Charles”.

Lancer audibly sighs, nearly groans actually, on the other end, “now I don’t doubt that. And because I don't want any possibly ecto-contaminated paper from FentonWorks making its way into the students' homes, I already sent out the permission slips”.

Danny blinks, well damn, appreciated he guesses? Blinking again, “huh, well ah, thanks, Lance, I guess. I’m taking it that you just mailed them out though and that I still have to actually tell my own class of fellow teens that they have mandatory pets now?”. That gets a chuckle out of the man.

“You requested this, Daniel, now you have to deal with it. Though somehow I think you’ll be getting ‘thank you’s rather than annoyed groaning and complaining”.

Danny chuckles, “hey if you want everyone to like you more you shouldn’t assign so much work”.

“I’d be doing you teens a disservice”.

Danny rolls his eyes at that one, the man was dedicated he’ll give him that much. “Not ‘fully grasping literary genius’ isn’t really gonna affect anyone negatively, Lance. I’d definitely rather sleep than brush up on your beloved Shakespeare”.

“It’s good for the mind”.

“So’s sleep”, snorting, “and I missed enough of that as it is”.

“Now that I can agree and attest to, considering your class habits. I’ll let you go”.

Danny blinks at his phone, well that was abrupt. Fucking rude. Eh, it’s not like Danny didn’t fuck off randomly all the time. Oh well. Sighing and pushing off of the fountain, “whelp, guess I know what I’m stuck doing tomorrow… or the day after tomorrow? Fuck, what day even is it?”.

Hint: it was Friday. And Danny, like a dumbass, forgot to even attempt to show up for class.

“Ah well. Fuck”.

It probably says a lot that Lancer didn’t even bother cussing him out for that. Should he feel ashamed? embarrassed? at least a little guilty? Probably. Does he? Honestly, no. He stopped feeling guilty about that kind of shit a long ass time ago. Being a little half-dead hero that has to tap out constantly and lie all the time kinda does that to you after a hot minute or two. Which probably wasn’t exactly healthy. But also, it’s not like ‘healthy’ was really a thing he was familiar with these days. Eh, whatever.

Anyway, time for a night fly/patrol.

---

So now it was Monday and Danny officially has to ‘face the music’ or whatever the fuck.

To bad Technus got fancy with the house's microwave and basically destroyed half of Danny’s bedroom. Meaning he couldn’t even look good… good-ish. He absolutely gets some smug pride from the fact that him going to his ‘professional job’ in tattered clothes would piss Vlad off something fierce though. Actually deciding to stick with wearing a pair of pants with one leg torn off so badly that his boxers were able to be seen probably wasn’t the world's smartest idea. At least his shitty Antichrist button-up t-shirt was intact! … More or less anyways. (It was missing a pocket and maybe the bottom wasn’t quite the same shape it once was but he’s not too sure about that bit). The cloaks perfectly fine of course, being ghostly clothing and all.

Pushing the classroom door open with his foot, “alright little ectoplasm knowledge nuggets, we actually have some housekeeping s̷͞h̷i͞ţ̧ to see to so…”.

Val doesn’t even let him actually get to the whiteboard, “so what was up with Friday?”.

Emilie leans back in her seat, “yeah, the only class that’s actually neat is also the one class with a tardy teach”.

Danny points at her, “hey, I resent that statement of truth”, finishing his walk to the board and smacking it, “honestly? I forgot”. Val just stares at him so he winks at her, earning him a scowl and a thrown pencil; which he lets just bounce off his head. Pulling out his quill and striking it all the way down the board, the words ‘FINAL ASSIGNMENT’ magically forming.

Jesse shakes his head, “I still don’t understand that stupid quill”.

Brittney scoffing, “whatever, it’s not like he’ll give us one”. Danny snorts over his shoulder at that, “yeah, no s̷͞h̷i͞ţ̧”. Turning around dramatically enough to make the cloak fan out, “what’s also no s̷͞h̷i͞ţ̧ is that finals are a thing and that I also -like any sane teen- hate written exam s̷͞h̷i͞ţ̧, so we’re not doing that”.

To no ones surprise that announcement results in some smiles, some cheers, one or two fist pumps/high fives, and multiple relieved sighs.

Val chuckles and leans her chin on a palm, “yeah I was wondering how you were going to write some test that covered everything”. Danny absolutely chuckles and nods at that.

Plopping down onto the side of his desk, “so hear me out, since I’m obviously not writing some written thingamajig out and I’m not nearly enough of a sadist to make oral presentations a thing that’s happening”, clapping his hands together cheerily, “so instead y’all are gonna be ghost hunters for a bit”, shrugging, “or for however long it takes you to catch a blob ghost in our town”, tilting his head and tapping his chin, “which honestly shouldn’t take that long all things considered”.

The class just blinks at him for a bit before most burst out laughing.

Emilie wheezes a little, “you are one quirky fucker”. Valerie shaking her head, “here I thought you were about to ask us to catch a proper ghost”, smirking, “which I’m down for”.

Danny rolls his eyes, “as fun as it would be to torment Boxy by making fifteen odd teens repeatedly catch him, I doubt that would accomplish much”.

Todd puts his hands behind his head, “we can totally still do that”. Dale laughing, “HA! Yeah! That could be fun!”, and elbows Dash a couple of times which turns into a mild dude-bro shoving match. Todd snickers meanly at that before looking back at Danny, “and what’s up with the lame-ass underwear? Becoming a bad stripper or something”.

Danny rolls his eyes at the jab, “Technus got a little friendly with a microwave”.

“They’re green”. Apparently, Todd doesn’t give a flaming fuck about the ‘why’, just the colour. Figures.

Valerie rolls her eyes at the fake ass ‘bad boy’, “Danny’s a joke, of course they’re ecto-green”. Danny nodding and rolling his hand about in the air, “and besides, sleeping in phase-proof underwear is a pretty solid idea, all things considered”. That earns some understanding cringing from the class. Danny sticking up a finger, “just like having you lot bring me some captured but not destroyed-”, giving Val a meaningful look, “-spookies makes perfect sense for an ecto-ology final!”.

A couple of people shrug, Ashley muttering, “oh what the Hell”, toying with her fingers a little, “but does it have to be a big one?”.

Danny waves her off, “naw, so long as it’s in the blob family I don’t care”.

James sighs, leaning on a palm, “but why can’t we just do something normal? An essay?”.

Danny puts a hand to his chest in mock offence, “why I never! I just said I’m not a sadist”, waving a hand around, “and because, I am the true multimedia teacher of spooky academia, just handing out knowledge like a new kind of haemophilia. So I am creating g̵͡o͝d̶͡d͠҉am̛n͘҉ new educational finals criteria. Just don’t go getting into necrophilia on me”, and winks as everyone else groans.

Dustan muttering, “so much for not being a sadist”. Sophia sticks up a hand.

“Yes?”.

She plays with her fingers a little, “well, um, what about our parents?”.

James jumps in, “hey yeah, are we just supposed to keep a ghost in our rooms till finals week?”.

Dash scoffs, “aww is some scared of a little blob ghost”. James just rolls his eyes at that.

Danny shrugs, “eh Lance already sent out permission stuff so parent stuff’s already covered. And naw, catch one by…”, humming to himself, “… oh let’s say next Monday. Bring me proof”, holding up a finger, “but also don’t let the little bugger go. Because if you think all I’m asking is ghost capture then ho boy you’re wrong”. Let them make of that what they want. More than a few look slightly disturbed and he absolutely hears Ashley mutter something about dissection. Danny’s pretty sure Lancer wouldn’t let him get away with that. The blender stunt had been pushing it already, apparently there was a such thing as detention for teachers. Shudder.

Jesse glares at Danny then Valerie, “you better not be marking this on time because some of us have unfair advantages”.

Dash jumps in, “yeah! Little miss anti-ghost psycho probably fantasises about this!”.

Todd rolling his eyes, “as if you need to worry about that, you’d piss yourself before catching one anyway”.

“FUCK YOU!”.

Danny chuckles, his class was probably the only one where anyone could shout ‘FUCK YOU’ and not get in shit. Though Dash being ‘star football star McGee’ probably wouldn’t get in trouble for it in any class. Tch. “Now now, just g̵͡o͝d̶͡d͠҉am̛n͘҉ catch one”, shrugging, “don’t care how or when or colour or whatever the f̵̛u̕͞c̴̶̡k̶̨͠. Ancients, go climb a crane and fish one out of the bucket for all I care. But if you die, don’t haunt me”.

Val sighs, giving him an exasperated look, “great, now someone’s going to do exactly that”. Emilie laughing, “I call dibs!”. Making Val thump her head on her desk. Danny does at least give her an apologetic shrug, hey not his fault that people like to take him up on his bullshit to fuck around and find out.

(Did someone actually take him up on the crane idea? According to the news, yes, yes someone did. Danny’s personal bets are not on Emilie even if she did ‘dibs it’, it was probably one of the quiet kids honestly. At least they were smart enough to wear a disguise. So long as Lancer doesn’t find out…).

---

Danny groans face down in his bed, Lancer was in his bedroom. WHY?!?!?!? Well okay, he knew exactly why. Lancer specifically asked for Danny’s makeshift final to not interfere with other classes and what happened? Well apparently a blob ghost ate the cord to the old school projector that Joshep loved so much. BECAUSE OF COURSE THAT HAPPENED! Danny had some truly shit luck. Groaning again, “I didn’t ask them to randomly bring them to school!”, mumbling, “at least not until next week”. What dumbass caused his problem? Probably Todd honestly. Dash might want to shit kick him but the jock was not nearly petty/sneaky enough to ‘get Fenturd’ in this kind of roundabout way. Todd, however, was the definition of petty. Though Danny was a lot more petty; but he’s a ghost! He’s allowed to be!

Lancer sighs faintly, “you’re still the reason ultimately. Even if Joshep has little room to talk, considering how his class law experiment went”.

“You’re talking about the one that was a recreation of that prison psychology excitement thing? Because yeah, that was bad even by my standards and my experience with jailers involved a lot more tasers”.

“… Daniel, I explicitly remember you tasing people at that time even though you weren’t even in his class”. Danny can practically hear his technical boss shaking his head, “that doesn’t change that you owe Joshep a new projector, and I am not putting it on the FentonWorks tab”. Danny groans very loudly over that. Fuck.

Danny rolling over in his bed and just staring at the ceiling, “forcing me to spend the paycheck you give me on stuff for the school, smarmy shit”.

“That word doesn’t mean what I think you believe it does”.

Danny shrugs, “eh. And besides, Lance”, turning his head to actually look at the man, who quirks an eyebrow before Danny continues, “lords of knowledge, or whatever, should be allowed to ban finals because reasons”, putting a hand very egotistically to his own chest and trying to bleed ego, “a lord like me specifically”.

Lancer chuckles and shakes his head slowly, “I’m sure you would ban them if Id let you”.

“Oh yeah, no shit. In a frickin’ heartbeat-”.

Both of them pause and glance at the floor when a very loud explosion sounds and actually makes the floor shake a little. Not for the first time Danny’s glad he’s nailed/screwed down a large majority of the shit in his room. He even got those weird suction drinking cups that even he, with his ghostly strength, couldn’t slap over.

Barely seconds later his mom pushes open his door, smiling quickly at Lancer, “sweetie, Mr. Lancer, you may what to head outside”, rolling her eyes a bit fondly, “Jack, the dear, might have blown up the photon carbon ecto-endaton”.

Danny blinks, “you mean that new bomb thing? You guys actually blew up something that was supposed to blow up?”. His mom actually has the fucking balls to nod sheepishly. Lancer, however, is sweating unpleasantly.

They absolutely head outside.

Danny patting Lancer on the shoulder while they stand from the sidewalk watching smoke pour out the door/windows, “I’m guessing this’ll be the last time you make an unexpected house visit?”.

“… your home life worries still… this has not helped”.

“‘Life’! HA! Good one!… so will you not dying today count as payment enough?”.

“No, Daniel. Just no”.

“Damn. Was getting my hopes up for a second”.

Lancer glares at Danny a little before heading home; Danny cackles to himself a little. He may be paying for Joshep’s stupid projector love out of his own pocket, but at least he got to make someone -Lancer- regret their life choices in the process. His ghost sense going off tells him that he’s also going to get someone to regret their death choices. Nice. Two for one coupon.

---

Thankfully there were no other blob ghost-related incidences, that Danny heard about, before Monday.

“So did everyone catch a blob ghost?”. That question gets Danny a pretty solid round of ‘yes’s and people holding up blobs in jars or just waving around their phones to show pictures of their particular blob. Danny nodding to himself, “good good”, sounding ominous, “now your final can begin”.

Earning lots of concerned staring and worried glances at the present blob ghosts. Which makes sense, ominous-ness deserves at least some worry. Especially considering the things that usually followed Danny specifically being ominous.

Danny, content with his mild terrorising, actually explains himself while staring down his class like he’s some kind of government agency boss, “your assignment is thus, you will keep that blob ghost ‘alive’ until the twentieth. One full month. And you bet your knickers I’m gonna be tagging your suckers so I will know if you f̵̛u̕͞c̴̶̡k̶̨͠ it up and try to replace them”, glaring at the class comically, “you can keep it trucking however you see fit, use that knowledge! Bring It to hang around Cored ghost! Give It ecto food! Ecto-water! Use your imagination”, chuckling, “just don’t try creating a ghost portal to throw It in the Zone. That’s a real good way to die”.

Jasper grumbles, “yeah the freaking mayor was pretty clear about that”.

Amber purses her bubblegum pink lips, “and how do you plan to ‘tag them’? Half of us didn’t even bring ours!”, and huffs to herself. Danny smirks almost meanly and flops backwards in his chair to spin around more lazily in it, “I’m a teacher not a cop, meaning I don’t have any jobly standards against breaking and entering”.

Emilie snorts and starts snickering while Dash half shouts, “there’s no way a twerp like you has the guts!”. Dale shrugging, “well his freak folks do bust down walls all the time”.

“Still! Fenton’s a wimp!”, Dash grumbling to himself a little, “even if he’s manned up a little”, grumbling even quieter to himself, “… and some of the wimpiness was faked”.

Danny rolls his eyes, toying with yet another pink slip, “pinky pinky someone should keep their lips zippy zippy”. Earning death glares from Dash. Danny chuckling, “anyway, considering my lack of giving a s̛hi̸t̡ about school rules and whatnot you'd think me also lacking in the s̛hi̸t̡ giving department towards general laws would be some kind of a given”, shrugging, “eh whatever. I’ll tag your suckers and I’ll tag ‘em just right”, and smirks, turning back to face the whiteboard.

Valerie rolls her eyes and coughs a little, “well that wasn’t creepy at all, Danny”. Which really only makes Danny smirk more as he shoves himself out of his chair before going about writing up what in all this ‘final assignment’ even involved with his funky little quill. And while everyone goes about reading that shit he’ll walk around and ‘mark’ all the little blob ghosts, which sit all pretty and proper for him; being that he’s the strong ghosty here and being that they all ‘live’ in his wonderful little lair.

Brittney scowls at her blob, “why does It listen to you? Every time I touch It, It tries to bite me”, her attempting to pet It and getting almost bit in response feels like emphasis, and more than a few people nod at that. Danny just chuckles meanly, “because they fear me”, and moves on without explaining that at all.

Dash scowls and grumbles down at his desk, “as if anything fears him”. Which really just makes Danny smirk. Oh how wrong that was, in more ways than one. Which he wasn’t exactly always happy about. Danny did like certain fear, he was a ghost after all, and he definitely liked it if it was The Observants or Boxy’s fear. Just not genuine fear from the general population of humanity, Amity, the Zone, etcetera.

Danny popping back over to the board, “ookily dookily, now that that’s done and over with”, glancing at the class meanly, “I will get the rest of you later”, then back to the board, “now for actual class class s̛hi̸t̡. Which yeah sure fine, this has nothing to do with the final so technically you could just ignore my a̡̡s͢͞s̸ or f̢̡u͞c҉k͡ off entirely if you think you can sneak out for a half hour-ish without getting caught. But hey! My s̛hi̸t̡ might be useful s̛hi̸t̡”, shrugging, “or at least interesting. Unlike most stupid classes”. That gets him some snickers and laughs. Success. He’s also not surprised no one takes him up on the ‘fucking off and leaving’ option; most people took this class because they actually wanted to hear some nut job yammer on about ghosts… or at this point they just wanted to bear witness to whatever shit might happen to or be done by Danny. Perfectly understandable.

---

“You did what?”.

Danny shoves another mouthful of the noodle dish in his mouth before looking up to his mom, “uhhhh, it seemed like a better idea than some useless info dump regurgitation required test”. Okay so maybe it was stupid of him to think that his folks, oblivious as they often are, would just… not notice? people running around after blob ghosts.

She gives him a worried look, “but Danny, they’re still ghosts. Still dangerous”. Danny makes a point not to roll his eyes. Sure her genuine worry was ludicrously misplaced and steeped in ectophobia but it was still genuine… and while Danny is indeed a little shit, he’s not an utter dick.

He does still wave her off though, “i’s’ine”, swallowing his food, “it’s not like they haven’t spent an entire semester learning about this shit. Ghost shit”. She frowns at him, “still”.

His dad waves her off goofily, “oh I'm sure the kids have some idea what they’re doing, Mads!”, laughing loudly, “especially with Danno over here!”, and smacks Danny one on the back hard enough to make him cough. Danny appreciates the confidence but does he really have to get mildly assaulted at the same time? Not that he really minded but still.

Danny sticking up a finger, “and besides, Lance did approve it soooooooo…”, and waves his hand around limply. He’s honestly a little amazed by that fact still. Either Lancer trusted him a wee bit too much or didn’t want to see what else he might request if denied. It worked out mighty fine if you ask Danny. So far everyone seemed to be doing fine, sure Val had called and asked if she’d lose marks if she ‘used It as a pin cushion’; Danny said ‘yes’, of course… she was definitely disappointed. And both Dash and Dale were trying to teach theirs to fetch footballs. He might have to go give Todd a talking to about trying to turn his into some kind of feudal warlord over the other ‘wild’ blobs though.

She sighs and picks at her food a little, “it’s not that I don’t trust Danny”, actually looking at Danny, “but couldn’t you have just had them catch and release or even track Phantom down and hand them off to him?”. Danny sighs a little, “but that would have hardly covered anything. How’s that supposed to test their understanding of low-level behaviouralism or stuff like ghost hunger”. She actually blinks at him, sounding slightly confused, “ghost… hunger…”.

Ah

Shit

Right

Sometimes he forgets he actually knows -and teaches- shit his folks don’t actually know. Which is weird all alone. But hey, ectophobes don’t deserve to know. So Danny just shrugs and elects not to even attempt to explain himself. They’re -or at least his mom, based on his dad going back to chowing down food- are probably just slightly worried about what he’s teaching his fellow teens.

His mom, of course, presses the issue, “…Danny…”. Which Danny takes as the perfect time to get up and head towards the door, “whelp, guess I should go and stop someone from establishing tyrannical blobby rule”, waving his folks off as he actually heads out said door, “Todd’s kinda a dick… and moron”. He doesn’t miss his mom frowning or her muttering, “maybe this job wasn’t the best idea… and is he implying someone’s trying to teach leadership to a blob?”. His dad laughing a little, “yeah so weird! Those things can’t even be trained not to bite! HA!”.

Danny rolling his eyes as he looks up at the sky, “oh they’re easily trainable”, and chuckling to himself a little.

-

It’s a simple ten-minute flight before he’s got himself perched on his ankles on Todd’s bedroom windowsill. Apparently the guy keeps his bed right next to the window… which is street-facing. Fuck that’s stupid and reckless. How has he never gotten rudely awakened by Phantom him or some other ghost getting throw into/threw this wall. Fucking Ancients, mild death wish much. But hey, it gives Danny the opportunity to be a creepy little bastard gremlin. Aka, Danny absolutely leans ominously down over Todd before speaking, “looks like sleeping beauty’s been naughty”. Todd, like Danny wanted, gets jolted awake, yelps, shuffles backwards, smacks his head on his headboard, and just stares at Danny in shock. Danny snickers meanly, “trying to establish tyrannical rule, tsk tsk tsk, can’t have that now can we”.

Todd gulps and musters up some -clearly fake- bravado, “what the Hell man”.

“Not from Hell but I’m sure Satan would be touched that you think I’m his handy work. Real compliment right there”.

Danny hops off the windowsill, over Todd/his bed, and lands in the guy's room; cloak fluttering in the air faintly all the while, he was technically doing his job right now after all. “So as I was saying, trying to make a merciless authoritative ruler out of your blobby is not part of the final and is honestly quite objectionable”.

“You broke into my room”.

“And you sleep right next to a street-facing window, so clearly I’m not the one making stupid life decisions here, buddy”, turning around and smirking at his fellow teen, “you’re practically begging for a break and enter, be glad it’s just your quirky teacher taking you up on that offer”. Granted he was also basically the most powerful ghost around town, but hey right now he was just teacher. Shrugging, “granted breaking in here isn’t apparently all that entertaining, considering all you’ve done so far is wake up and stare at me from your bed like a brain-dead monkey”.

Todd jerks and glares at him, “aww am I boring you. Get out of my room”.

Danny shrugs again, “ah naw, I’m good right where I am”. Snapping his fingers and sending out a bit of his energy to call over the little blob ghost that Todd’s SUPPOSED TO JUST BE TAKING CARE OF BUT IS INSTEAD GROOMING INTO A WAR MONGER. The blob ghost of course listens and immediately zips over and rolls around under Danny’s raised palm. Danny turns his attention to the little guy, speaking like one does to a small child or kitten who’s being misled by a miscreant, “now you listen here little one, don’t let this jackass fill your head with silly little thoughts of blob world domination”, staring at It meaningfully, “Phantom’s the more peace-seeking type”. The blob actually shudders slightly over the prospect of being rejected by Phantom.

Todd screws up his face and mutters disbelievingly when the blob turns to him and hisses. Danny smirking at the teen, “have fun taking care of them now”, and throws a very cheeky peace sign before strutting smugly over to the window and dropping out it down to the sidewalk.

Danny’s not even slightly surprised to get a bunch of empty energy cans thrown out the window at him along with a very loud, “FUCK YOU”… and a slightly shrieked, “YOU BIT ME!”. Hahahahaha have fun with that Todd, serves him right.

---

Todd had glared at him angrily and was more of a nuisance than usual for multiple days, not that Danny gave a shit. He also ‘reported’ Danny as a ‘peeping Tom’ to Lancer which did result in a ‘conversation’ with the man but Danny’s counter of outing Todd as attempting to turn the general blob community in harbingers of war -which fine was a major exaggeration but whatever- resulted in Lancer sighing exhaustedly and basically throwing out the report. One of these days Danny’s going to run out of ways to make Lancer slightly regret ever offering him a job but that day has yet to come.

Danny smacks a hand on the whiteboard a couple of times, “alrighty alrighty alrighty, test results time!”, turning around and smirking at the class, “you get that s̛h͜i̕͟t͠ now since no one has to waste time grading a bunch of stupid paper scanner thingies and then rechecking them for fu̕͝c͟k̛͜ ̧u͝p̸̨s”, and smacks the board again. Though pausing at the cracking sound and snapping his head around to the board. There’s a decent-sized crack/dent in it, making Danny grin like an idiot, throw his hands up, and cheer, “YES! FINALLY!”. He has cracked the board! It has happened! Turning back to the class, actually tearing up a little and wiping his eyes, “I’m truly overjoyed. Blessed really”.

James blinking and muttering, “is he crying?”. Dash snorting, “ha loser”. Val actually turning around to the jock while Danny holds up a pink slip, “do you never learn?”.

“I’m collecting them at this point”.

Val blinks at that, “now you sound like Danny”. Dash looks genuinely offended and like he’s seconds away from starting a brawl right then and there, “you take that back!”.

“Make me!”.

Danny just laughs and waves a hand dismissively, “now now children, no fighting”. Earning him eye-rolls and scowls, Val laughs though so it’s a win in his books. Summoning out his staff and pointing it rather aggressively at the class, only Ashley jumps so clearly they’ve gotten too used to his shit by now, “now present to me your blob pets for grading!”.

Everyone dutifully pulls out their jarred blob ghosts and places them on their desks. Maple sticking up a hand, “do we have to release them or?”.

Danny chuckles, “you can keep ‘em if you wanna, wouldn’t exactly recommend it but hey Charles’s -that he so rudely stole from me- is doing cool so”, shrugging, making his staffs bell jingle. Danny pushing his energy into his staff making the feathers multiply and extend out to ‘assess’ the blobs. It was fucking weird that his staff could basically do anything so long as it had to do with his ‘role’ as Wisdom Guardian.

Jesse shakes his head at his blob attempting to nibble the feathers, “I’m just going to pretend this makes sense. This class is almost weirder than the ghosts are”. Danny simply smirks at that.

Danny nodding to himself after a bit, feathers retracting, gesturing the staff over the board making the results magically appear. Danny nodding smugly at his handy work/his students' results, fists on his hips, “Ancients the G.I.W. would hate me so much”.

“You say that as if you don’t already”.

Danny ignores that, turning around grinning and gesturing grandly at the board, “behold! Crack or no, your results!”. Walking to his desk and flopping down into his chair, “of course no one failed”, leaning back and feigning being utterly desolate, “oh how disgraceful that would be. To think my pupils would even consider bringing such shame upon me, after everything I have bestowed upon them”.

Val gets up and slams a cup of coffee on his desk, “will you stop being overdramatic now?”. Danny snagging it up eagerly, “oh why thank you”, gesturing dramatically, “my beloved emergency caffeine maid, how I thank yo-”, Val promptly cuts him off by punching his head into his desk.

“Call me ‘Maid’ again and I’ll make you a ghost”.

Danny just grumbles incoherently into his desk while the class goes about looking at the results.

“Oh Hell yeah! Guess who’s average is going up!”.

“Honestly I thought I did worse. Wow”.

“The bastard seriously docked me marks. Jerk”.

“You deserved it, Todd”.

“I’m honestly actually kinda proud of this. Doesn’t feel as meaningless as tests usually do”.

“High five bro!”.

“Heck yeah bro!”.

“That’s enough ‘bro’ing. Fuck”.

“Shove it, pipsqueak”.

“Is it sad that I care more about this result than my math results?”.

“Now if only uni gave a shit about this class…”.

Danny lifts his head up off his desk and rests his chin in a palm, “good for all of you”, sipping his coffee, “granted I’d got all happy go lucky if I ever got decent grades”. Val actually gives him a slightly sympathetic look at that, even if she says, “well maybe if you didn’t skip constantly”. Danny just takes another sip of his drink before standing up, “so who wants to do a blob release party in the field? Like releasing balloons into the sky”.

Maple practically skips back to her desk and actually hugs the jar her blobs in, “not mine”. Danny waves her off, “that’s perfectly fine”, standing up, swinging the staff behind his head to rest on his neck/shoulder. Wandering over to the window and just falling out of it, “see you out there!”.

James blinks, “we’re… not following him, are we”.

Valerie shrugs, “yup”, and basically jumps out of it.

“There’s a lot wrong with the two of them”.

“That’s nothing new”.

“I’m taking the stairs, this is ridiculous”.

“Well it is Danny for you”.

“I love this class”.

-

Danny just grins at everyone with their jars, nodding at them all before pointing his staff up at the sky for no real reason other than dramatics, more than a few classrooms have teens staring out at them while everyone -well almost everyone anyway, a small handful opting out- opening their jars and letting out the random blobs.

Some of the blobs just start zipping around or floating off, a couple nuzzle their particular caretakers, one or two just straight up stay and take naps on the grass. It was all kinda cute actually.

Amber crouching down on her ankles petting one of the grass sleeping blobs, “yeah I guess we kind of put you guys through the wringer, huh”. Danny chuckling, “oh yeah, for the most part, blobs do perfectly well living on their own in the wild-”.

Half the class basically speaks in unison and in time with him, “so long as there’s enough ectoplasm around”, followed by, “we know”.

Danny pouts at everyone, “well at least y’all remembered”. He has been successful at this teaching thing. Hurray. Good for him. Guess for now he’ll just enjoy the view of the healthy blob ghosts running around. Todd’s is apparently still somewhat ticked at him, taking the time to naw on his pants before fucking off. Hopefully, that one doesn’t cause problems in the future.

---

“So how was it? I saw that everyone passed”.

“Surprisingly enjoyable”.

“Really now”.

Sigh. “Fine I’ll admit it, you were right about this being a good option for me”.

“Good. So you’re up for doing this again next semester I take it”.

“At this point? No shit. Though I think my folks are going to interrogate me about my ‘usual’ and ‘forbidden’ and ‘impossible’ and ‘can’t possibly be true’ knowledge at this point, all things considered”.

Slight chuckle. “Good, it might do them some good. Their bigotry only seems to grow more concerning”.

“Heh, nice to hear it called bigotry honestly”.

“You’d be the one to say that”.

“Yeah, I guess so”.

“You know you’ve got one more thing to do now though”.

“Oh yeah? What?”.

“Get Christmas gifts from your students”.

“FUCK”.

“We also have a staff holiday party”.

“…oh I hate you so much”.

Chapter 7: Probably Utterly Unnecessary Overly Wordy Self-Imposed And Unintentional Obligatory Closing Chapter (But Christmas-Themed) Because I Knee-Jerk Hate Christmas And Will Take Any Given Opportunity To Take A Piss On The Season So In The Words Of Danny Fenton ‘Dude, I Am *Sick* Of Christmas!’… ‘I Know! (Puts Down Walker’s Arm And Grabs The Orange) How ‘Bout *This*!’

🎵All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth🎵

🎵My two front teeth🎵

🎵See my two front teeth🎵

🎵Gee, if I could only have my two front teeth🎵

🎵Then I could wish you, "Merry Christmas"🎵

…

….

…..

🎵What a bright time, it’s the right time🎵

🎵To rock the night away🎵

🎵Jingle bell time is a swell time🎵

🎵To go gliding in a one-horse sleigh 🎵

Danny’s grumbling almost aggressively and marching to class looking like he actively wanted to murder someone… slowly and violently. Repeatedly. Scowling up at the ceiling, nearly snarling at the speakers, “swell time my ass”, before basically kicking in his classroom door. Was he wearing an anti-Christmas sweater? Yes. Only because apparently teachers were ‘highly encouraged’ to show ‘holiday spirit’ with their clothing. Fuck Christmas. Fuck Christmas cheer. Goddamnit. His shirt said ‘sleigher’ -because Danny will pun regardless of how shitty or not his mood may be. And currently, it was quite shitty indeed- with a murdered reindeer. A graphically murdered reindeer. He’s pretty sure no teacher has tried to dress code him because of the fear of throat punching based off his facial expression.

Anyway…. door kicking. Ancients he wishes the stupid thing wasn’t built fucking solid o that his goddamn foot would have just smashed a nice little hole in the bottom. But hey, at least the door bangs against the wall hard enough to shake and bounce back enough that he has to kick it again to get it out of his way. And fine maybe he has to do that repeatedly. And sure maybe he just gets more violent about it. And okay he absolutely broke one of the hinges. Whatever. Fuck that door.

Valerie just sighs and shakes her head, well aware of Danny’s hatred for Christmas and well used to him turning into an angry chihuahua this time of year. Dash also rolls his eyes, even if he’s slightly intimidated. The rest of the class just looks on concerned as Danny walks over to the whiteboard, him smacking it hard enough to make the cracking spread, “alright so the next fucker who asks if I’m going to decorate this room will get stabbed and I will use your blood as the decoration to make this place look like Satan’s personal spa retreat, including something demonic-looking getting summoned into the corner to stare at you all menacingly”, glaring at a couple of people in particular, “and the next person to give me a bag of feathers as a present is spending the holidays with Boxy in a warehouse. Got it. Good. Anyways, since we don’t need no stinking stupid-ass review periods because we’re already done with that shit, what the fuck do ya wanna talk about and preferably loud enough to block out the crappy Christmas music”.

Todd blinks, “what crawled up your ass and died”. Danny snapping at him immediately, “my will to live in this god-forsaken time of year”.

🎵Who doesn’t love to sing We Wish You A Merry Christmas?🎵

Danny’s rye twitches, him half shouting towards the ajar door, “I fucking don’t!”.

🎵Good tidings we bring🎵

🎵To you and your kin🎵

🎵Good tidings for Christmas🎵

“Take those ‘tidings’ and shove them up your ass!”.

🎵And a happy New Year!🎵

Scowling and looking at the class, “y’all better start talking or I’m going to get in trouble for vandalism and destruction of school property”. Now that gets the class chuckling at him a little, making him roll his eyes somewhat fondly.

James shakes his head, “so I take it you don’t exactly like Christmas”. Valerie turning to him, “understatement. Danny hates Christmas more than the Box Ghost hates circles”.

“Well damn, that’s actually impressive”.

Danny sighs and glares at the ceiling, “and I actually hate it less than I used to”. That gets him some disbelieving staring. Whatever. Yes his hatred might be excessive but he’s a ghost goddamnit, excess is the name of the game; fuck off.

Amber purses her lips, “soooo… you don’t want presents then. Or any more anyway”. Danny sighs, “it’s fine. But make them Christmas-themed at your own peril”. The class absolutely laughs at him, not that he gives a shit. So long as no one gives him Christmas socks they can laugh all they want.

(Does basically everyone eventually give him something? Yes. Was it mostly ghost-themed/related? Also yes. Did at least one person be a complete jackass and give him something Christmas-themed? Definitely; but no one else did after he dumped ectoplasm-infused eggnog on that particular teen's head)

“Ignoring Danny’s hate boner, I vote we talk about Phantom”.

Dash grinning, “well duh!”.

Danny chuckles and shakes his head a little, “I swear this town has a mass obsession or something”, shrugging, “eh what the heck why not”. Val rolls her eyes which makes him smirk, even if his mood’s still shit. He pretty much just lets everyone chat amongst themselves; him flopping down in his chair and pretty much zoning out.

By the time class is coming to an end Danny’s got his feet up on the whiteboard ledge, Danny glancing at the clock, “whelp this has been fun”, lifting his feet off and spinning his chair around to face everyone, “guess this whole teaching thing was, like, an actually good idea. Dealing with you people wasn't terribly horrible”. He’s amazed the whole Phantom thing never got caught.

“Yeah fuck you too, teach”.

Danny grins and finger guns. Emilie getting up and tilting the door to get it open graces his ears with more fucking Christmas music though.

🎵Let’s sing Merry Christmas and a happy holiday🎵

🎵This season may we never forget the love we have for  *bell sounds*🎵

Danny snags his quill and flicks it at the speakers, shorting it out and making it smoke worryingly. Then blinking, “wait did they censor ‘jesus’? Haha nice”, smirking a little, that was probably Sam’s handiwork. Whelp anything that defaces a Christmas song is a plus in his book. Val shakes her head at him, “you going to wreck the other door hinge?”. Danny just gives her a thumbs up, gets up, and kicks the bottom hinge hard enough to bust it apart; the door falling with a thump to the ground. Danny nods, satisfied, to himself with crossed arms. Val rolls her eyes at him and gives him a friendly shove on the shoulder. Normally that would boost his mood entirely but his ghostly ears means he’s still able to hear the stupid fucking music from the other intact speakers.

Fuck this time of year.

(Though fine some of the presents he wound up getting were actually pretty neat. The ectoplasm lava lamp even impressed his folks, even if they were none too pleased about the ‘team ghost’ flag).

---

By the time the staff holiday party rolled around Danny had warned Lancer that if there was Christmas music playing the whole time or -Ancients help him- carollers, then he was going to invite Technus. Needless to say, said party did not have Christmas music.

Lancer shaking his head at Danny, “you can be quite intimidating when you want”. Danny just scowls at him, “you have never seen me legit piss off, Lance”. Even Danny knew angry Danny was a scary -and dangerous- Danny. The man simply chuckles, handing off a cup of punch to Danny. Who mutters down at it, “I could totally spike this with ectoplasm”.

“Don’t even think about it, Daniel. As it is we already had to put a cage over the noodles you brought for the pot luck”.

Danny snickers and side-eyes the writhing noddles with teeth gnawing on the bars. Unsurprisingly he was the only one willing to eat them. Frankly… they were delicious. “I like my food thank you very much”, and nods smugly. He can practically feel Millie glaring at him from across the room; she’s not exactly alone in said glaring. Not that Danny actually gives a shit.

Remi grins at him mischievously, practically slapping a reindeer headband on his head, “at least you made things more interesting, Mr. Grinch”. Danny scowls and subtly sets the antlers on fire. A couple teachers jerk away from him, but Charles laughs loudly, “you’re on fire!”. Danny smirks, “and? I happen to think it’s very friendly fire”. Remi giggles at him while Xander dumps some of the punch on Danny’s head. Rude. Understandable, but still rude.

“Whelp. Now my hair’s wet”.

“And that’s not better than being on fire?”.

Danny grins and nods smugly, “nope”.

Things go on for a while and there’s even a few shitty party games and a little dance thing which honestly just makes Danny think he’s going to die from mortification. What is it with full-blown adults and bad/embarrassing dancing? And pin the nose on the snowman? What the fuck, man. A certain purple cloaked figure distracts him from wincing over Mainers attempt at what appears to be some kind of shuffle? Eh whatever.

Danny grins at the blonde-haired man, honestly it still surprises him sometimes that his Guardian had a human form… well illusion would be more accurate. Not that that should really be surprising, considering their strength. “ClockWork”.

“Daniel”.

Lancer -who has apparently wandered back over for more punch- chokes a little, eyeballing the currently human-looking ghost. Right, he’s pretty sure he explained his Guardian to Lancer; possibly more than once actually. Lancer eyeballing Danny, “… Daniel”, with more than a little worry and warning in his voice.

Danny waves the man off, “it’s fine. ClockWork’s the last one you’d have to worry about”.

The ‘blonde’ nods, cloak moving slightly in a nonexistent wind, “indeed. Not that any would claim me harmless”.

“Nope, just legless”. ClockWork cuffs Danny one over the head for that. Danny pouting and rubbing his head, feigning injury. “Meanie”. ClockWork gives him an almost invisible fond smile.

Lancer blinks a bit harshly, “well… this is still for teachers”. Danny smirks, “and they ‘teach’ me. So there”.

ClockWork shakes their head, “I’m not here to partake, rather to remind someone that he has places to be”. Danny pouts at that, speaking incredibly sarcastically, “but I’m just hAvInG sO mUcH fUn. CaN’t YoU sEe?”, putting a hand to his chest dramatically, “BuT oH hOw NiCe Of My ClOaK bUdDy To CoMe FeTcH mE. oH hOw GrAtEfUl I aM”. ClockWork actually glares at him for that.

“Someone will come to fetch you”.

“Oh I know. But this party is just begging to be crashed”.

Lancer sighs, “for the love of Shakespeare, Daniel”. Putting on some obviously fake bravado and glaring at the ghost, “and where are you trying to take him”.

Danny sighs and sags a little, “Ancients fuck, Lance. Ghosts just so happen to have truce parties and maybe some of them get a little aggressive about me going to one”. More than a few of the other teachers are eyeballing Danny at this point.

Joshep glaring, “of course the ghosts actually like him”.

“Honestly isn’t he a little biased to be teaching about ghosts then?”.

Danny rolls his eyes, muttering, “having someone who dislikes ghosts would be what’s biased. Geez, been over this much”. Lancer claps Danny on the shoulder, avoiding ClockWork though, “for what it’s worth I agree with you, and my opinion just so happens to matter more”. Danny does smile over that, but eh, it’s probably a good idea that he skedaddles at this point.

Danny shrugs at Lancer before turning to ClockWork, “alright, cloak buddy, I’m sure Johnny’s already challenged someone to an unfair race and I’d rather a place get trashed after I’m there than before. But first…”, Danny turns around to grab up one of the Christmas oranges and lobs it through the ajar doorway. Resulting in the now more familiar than he’d like sound of Ghost Writers voice in the form of a shriek.

Lancer grimaces a little as Danny heads to the door, a few people watching awkwardly/cautiously, “I still don’t approve of you tormenting a poet with fruit”. That just makes Danny grin meanly at Lancer, then at the Ghost Writer who’s around the door and glaring at him.

Millie shouts after him, “you could at least dispose of the abomination that you call ‘food’!”. Danny shouting back, “naw! Why would I deny everyone the joy of such yummy friendly food!”, then snickering meanly to himself. Both ClockWork and Ghost Writer shake their heads at him, though ClockWork looks a lot more fond… and amused.

-

So what’s the first thing that greets Danny when he actually gets to Dora’s kingdom -which is apparently the place hosting, for his particular group anyway, this year- why it’s Skulker with a slice of pie in hand of course. Always was, probably always would be. Danny shaking his head fondly at the robotic ghost, “so what’s the flavour this year, my determined little poacher”.

“Berry and fish”.

Danny stares at him a little, “… okay yeah fuck you”, but takes the pie anyway. Like always it’s freaking delicious, but come on? Seriously? Berry and fish? Ghosts are weird, man. Not that he isn’t totally here for said weird.

It takes not even five minutes for Dora to practically skip up to him, putting a dainty hand on his shoulder lightly, “you look well, nest-mate mine”.

“You as well, Aurora”. Danny liked his nicknames, including for ghosties he actually liked. Danny smirking, putting a hand to his chest as she takes a step back, “in fact, I’m wonderfully well off. Got a group of teens to entertain most days,  then there’s the Guardian thing I’ve got going for me, oh and all these fuckers-”, jabbing a thumb towards the random crowd of ghosts, “-actually somewhat respect my human job”.

Ember scowls and snarks, “messing with a Guardian’s duties is just asking for trouble”.

“And you don’t actively want trouble? Huh, guess I misread you”. Ember flips Danny off for that. Dora, however, giggles lightly, hand over her mouth, “trouble-seeking as she maybe, there is a difference”.

Danny rolls his eyes, waving her off, “yeah yeah yeah, I know. Still fun to poke fun at everyone though”, and sticks his tongue out in Ember’s general direction; she throws a guitar pick at him, though she does look a little amused at least.

That was the nice thing about ghosts, they liked picking fights and poking fun at each other… and they liked others doing that back to them. Unlike humans, who usually got pissed off if you snapped back at them regardless of if they snapped at you first *cough cough* Dash *cough cough*.

Dora hums and nods to herself, “well you enjoy the party and may the truce for you be bless-ed, nest-mate”.

“May it be bless-ed for you as well, nest-mate”.

Dora was a nice sorta sister to have, and considering the Queen/mother fucking DRAGON thing he didn’t really have to worry about anyone picking fights with his little -even though she’s legit older than him- sister.

YoungBlood zips over and whisper laughs into Danny’s ear, “you should totally go bug that nasty Aragon about your boring adult stuff”, snicker, “he so doesn’t know”.

Danny grins wickedly, “oh Hell yeah”.

The kid -that Danny’s pretty sure he can only still see because he was absolutely still immature and because of the right to the High Throne thing- laughs and gets overexcited, “can I come! Can I come! Can I come! I’ll bring grapes”.

“Does everyone just know that I throw grapes at that bastard”.

“Yup!”.

“Fuck you, yes you can come”, smirking at the child ghost, “but make sure they’re extra squishy”. YoungBlood giving him a goofy thumbs-up before getting distracted by the sweets table.

Kitty giggles from the side at him, “here I thought teachers weren’t supposed to swear around children”.

“I resent that”, putting a hand to his chest, “why I in fact taught them to”, sticking up a finger, “in ghost speak specifically”. They had totally been taking advantage of that to get away with swearing in their other classes. Which Danny one hundred percent supports wholeheartedly. Kitty laughs at that and Danny’s going to take a guess that Johnny’s off hitting on some other girls here. Kitty speaking up again, “you know…. The flowers are kind of cute”, and giggles, leaning over to fiddle with one of the ghost pipes. Well that feels like proof to him.

Unsurprisingly Johnny comes out of nowhere, scowling at him then smirking attractively at Kitty, “come on babe, whatcha doing with him”.

She just huffs at him; Danny taking the opportunity to subtly slink away from the pair while they go about having one of their typical lovers quarrels. Danny damn near crashes into Desiree in the process through.

She scowls at him a little before shaking her head, “and that is why I absolutely do not ‘want a man’”. Danny chuckling awkwardly, “ah come on now, some of us are at least fun to mess with”. That gets a smirk out of the genie ghost, “true. Still not worth the trouble”. Danny just chooses to shrug before wandering off to the little appetiser table, Desiree’s tolerance for him was minimal at best… especially because he was a guy.

-

Danny barely gets to spend ten minutes demolishing the appetiser table before Walker is there being a pick and shoving a present at his chest unnecessarily hard. Danny letting out a little oof followed by a not so eloquent, “jerk”, in the prison wardens general direction.

The skull-faced ghost scowls at him, “I hope you are teaching those delinquents the law”. Danny rolling his eyes so hard it almost hurt, “of course, Whitey. I might be lazy and have a complete disregard for law but when I have responsibilities I actually tend to do them”, shrugging, “with the occasional shortcut”, smirking meanly at the ghost, “besides, the best ways to break the law require knowing it”, and winks. If it wasn’t the truce Danny is a-hundred-percent positive Walker would assault him right now.

Walker sneering, “you’re lucky it’s the truce, punk”, and stalking off feels like proof in Danny’s books.

Walker taking the initiative with the present giving basically results in everyone else following suit. Which of course means Danny gets pelted by boxes, which the exception of the occasional one that’s actually handed to him. They were all combative motherfuckers alright? Danny laughing probably doesn’t discourage it though.

Like always most would prove to be useless or even slightly insulting. Not that the gifts he chucks back won’t be equally offensive/pointless. He’s pretty sure his gift for Boxy is literally just a shit ton of marbles with square shapes inside them to really bug the guy. ClockWorks was a little touching though, being a gear cog accessory for his staff, and fine maybe Danny also gave ClockWork staff accessories. Like minds think in kind. Too bad FrostBite and Pandora have their own kingdoms truce celebrations to see to. Eh, he’ll visit them at some point. Besides, they all took turns hosting his group's truce celebrations. Technically he could go to those parties too but Danny’s not putting himself through three to six ‘Christmas’/‘Yule’/truce parties every year. He’s not a fucking masochist, regardless of what anyone might say.

Eventually, everyone gets all well and done with their present-based assault of each other. Dora nodding to herself and raising her chalice, “to a blessed and successful-”, everyone glancing judgingly at the Ghost Writer, “-truce!”. Danny, and more than a few others, chuckling at the Ghost Writers expense before sipping their prospective drinks. Was Danny’s the most disgusting horrid-looking concoction he could come up with based on what ingredients he had at his disposal? Abso-fucking-lutely. He even stuck in an orange wedge for the fuck of it. The smell was truly atrocious and the mild glaring that causes only makes Danny feel all the more smug. Drinking what’s effectively consumable battery acid with a devilish smirk as the party begins to draw to an end.

-

And boom bada boom, another year's festivities over. Guess the class shit’s over for another year too, so a nice little two-for-one ending there. Nice. Now to do it all over again in, like, a month. Well okay, a year for the truce crap. Oh whatever. Class starts again in January…

Eh at least Lancer had the decency to put Danny’s ecto-ology class in the afternoon again. Hopefully, that will never change. Though the fact that Danny still managed to show up late would probably cement that afternoon time slot. Ancients Danny might not show up at all out of spite if the man scheduled it any sooner. Lancer probably knew that too, the man had proven he understood waaaaaaay more than Danny ever thought/knew.

At least no one was treating him different due to the Guardian/teacher thing. Much anyways. Goes to show that Danny could probably change into infinitely stranger things and people would probably still go ‘eh that’s just Danny for you’. No one, ghost nor human, should have expected he’d become a freaking teacher (except ClockWork anyway… and the stupid fucking Observants) and yet everything went more or less fine.

But still, fuck Christmas.

And fuck the Observants for good measure.

What the heck, fuck the educational system too.

Throw in a ‘fuck his half-life’ for bonus points and to complete the nonexistent list of things to flip off before he goes to bed.

End.

[lexxiie]

Your VtK stuff is getting to me in the worse (best) way. Between the last two hc (snuggling and reveal) and my weakness for secret identity stuff, I humbly request your thoughts on how hiding his identity impacted his romance with reader.

Imagine:

•Cass is hesitant to get romantically involved for obvious reasons, but…he pretty isolated and you’re both happy around each other. Feeling grow beyond what he told himself he’d allow.

•you don’t suspect Gangu of cheating despite the occasional disappearances, odd hours, and secrets. you trust him and it seems more like he’s running several shady part time gigs—it’s just him and his sister after all. he doesn’t lying to you about it though—he keeps it vague and you don’t ask to many questions. He’s not the sort of person to do anything bad—hard drug dealing, robbery, etc.

•he gets you into exercise and you get him into one or two of your own hobbies. It’s fun to learn you both can cook, though Gangu only knows how to make western foods. Aparently he was secretly a fan of American and British cooking shows. You teach each other a lot. There is a lot of experimenting and shenanigans that go on in the kitchen. Not all the dish fusions turn out well, but you made them together.

•balancing his Villain life and civilian life is new for Cassian, before he could ignore his civilian life beyond the responsiblies of school and his care for his sister, but…there’s something worth while in his civilian life. Its become more than just a cover to maintain. He’s got you. And he’s desperate not to ruin it.

…pretty sure I’m not supposed to headcanon in a request for a headcanon…idk

Gah, *points dramatically* you’ve infected me! Seduced me to the dark side! Curse you! Thank you! Of course, you can have a totally different take on it then my overly dramatic self and don’t feel pressured to write if the muse isn’t with you!

Oh. My. God. *points dramatically* how dare you leave me like this?? where are the rest of this headcanons?! I NEED MORE. GIVE ME MOREEE!

No but seriously, though. What else can I add?, this is amazing! I love the concept of cooking with him. Well, I love all of this. You mentioned some very important facts about him hiding his identity, such as the main issue that would be the reader suspecting him. So let me complement this amazing concept you presented right here with his view on it.

Needless to say, he feels incredibly guilty about having to make up excuses to get away from you.

If it was all about what he wants, he would be glued to you 24/7.

And it really bothers him to think that you might think otherwise.

He knows he's not the most expressive guy ever, but he wants you to know how much you mean to him.

He just can't tell you the truth.

And it's not only because he's afraid of your reaction, at this point, he isn't. He's confident that you love him just as he loves you.

The issue here is that it would be dangerous for you to know.

It's already dangerous to be in a relationship with you, specially a romantic one.

The day when his enemies find out his real name is inevitable. He knows it.

When that day comes, and they find out that you exist... He doesn't even want to think about it.

It's honestly his worse fear.

He already lost the only person who ever cared for him before you came into the picture.

He can't lose you.

But he's also afraid that while you probably won't leave him for being a villain, you might leave him for being a damn liar.

This guilt and fear he feels weigh too much on him. So much that he feels the need to compensate you.

He makes sure to make every moment he spends with you worth it.

As if every day was an important date to celebrate for both of you.

And that's where the points you made come into play.

The cooking, working out together...

He hopes all of that is as meaningful to you as it is to him.

To him, every moment he spends with you is like living on a perfect bubble.

He doesn't have to think about being a villain, enemies, vengance... he just has to think about you.

The problem with living in a bubble is that bubbles burst.

And he will do everything in his power to make sure that when this bubble of ignorance he trapped you in bursts, you will still be by his side.

And he knows what he has to do. The only way to ensure that, is to tell you the truth. No more secrets.

[spidernerdsblog]

Heyyyyyy👋

I hope you don’t mind me requesting a peter parker where the reader is in a coma and some girls are hitting on him and asking if he is taken and he said like “yes, I’am just waiting for my princess to wake up” something like that. If you’re comfortable with it ofc.🙂 or just the reader asking him what would he say to the girls who’s hitting on him🥰 thank you in advance💕

Hey! Your ask kinda low-key made me sad but honestly I love it thank you for requesting. Hope you like this. Took a little inspiration from the amazing spiderman 2 where Gwen dies but here the reader goes into a comatose state instead.

Song inspo - Sunflower by post malone

Pairing : Peter Parker x Reader

Warnings : none

You're a Sunflower

It's been three months now as Peter stands in front of his university leaving his high school life behind and stepping into his college life; though this is not exactly how he imagined it would be he had imagined to walk through these gates with you hand in hand by his side. But as fate would have it you now lay in a bed succumbed into an eternal sleep. 

The memory was still fresh in his mind of how Harry clad in his green goblin suit kidnapped you to get his revenge on him though Peter was able to subdue him not before Harry threw you down the building. You reached out your hand to Peter with fear in your eyes for help and even after Peter's desperate attempt to save you by shooting his webs, he couldn’t web you up in time as your body hit the ground with an impact that your humanly body couldn't withstand all he remembers was you looking at him smiling softly before closing your eyes for eternity. 

You were rushed to the hospital and admitted in the critical care unit. Your parents came running after they heard about your accident, Peter couldn’t look in their eyes because it was he for whom their daughter is battling with death. Peter cried and prayed for you the whole night. With a heavy heart the doctors informed that the impact of your fall had directly affected your brain sending you into a coma and they have no idea when or ever are you going to recover from that state. Peter thought it was all a lie, he didn't want to believe that he may have lost you forever. At his request and with your parents' consent Tony shifted you to the Avengers compound so your treatment could be done under better hands and you recover quickly but neither Bruce could provide him with a satisfactory answer of when are you going to come out of your comatose state. The only thing now he could do was wait, wait for you to one day open your eyes and pull him back in your arms, his safe haven, even if he has to wait all his life he will wait. 

He had never wanted you to get involved in his dangerous life and that is why he revealed to you his secret identity to let you know that you both can’t be together. But you had laughed it off and playfully said to him "Haha, I laugh at the face of danger!"

🌻

After his classes were done for the day Peter walks back home stopping by the flower shop to buy flowers for you. It was a part of his daily routine now everyday after college he would bring you sunflowers. They were your favourite flowers because you once said to him they symbolize ‘‘a person who has loved with sincerity and purity never forgets, on the contrary, truly loves until the end’’

And you were his sunflower. You were a ray of sunshine in his life and he always thought that your love was too much for him which he would never be able to reciprocate you back, he was lucky enough to be a part of your life because he doesn’t deserve you. He blames himself for your condition. You were a bubbly person who loved the outdoors, the bustle on the streets, visiting new places and meeting new people. And he wanted to be part of every little adventure in your life but alas he robbed you of your life.

Reaching the compound he goes to visit you in your room. He replaces the dry sunflowers in the vase with the fresh ones he bought for you and sits beside you. You looked so calm and peaceful. It pains him immensely seeing you lying motionless wired to an HRM, the rhythmic beeping of the machine a proof that your heart still beats and all hopes are not lost, not yet. 

He misses your carefree laugh, misses your sweet honey laced voice, your warm smile that could brighten up anyone’s day. He craves for your touch; he wants to feel your soft delicate hands again as you caress his wounds after every time he comes back wounded fighting the bad guys. 

Everyday it's a struggle for him to leave you like this. He wants you to call him back by his name like you used to do every night before he left for patrolling not wanting him to go and risk his life out there.

🌻

It was fresher’s night Peter had already decided to give it a miss and spend time with you but Ned and Flash had forcefully made him tag along which he reluctantly did. The party was at full swing, music booming and drinks flowing. Drunk boys and girls hitting upon each other. Peter was standing at an isolated corner drinking a coke by now a bunch of girls had tried to make a move on him which he had managed to decline politely. He was never the man to indulge in infidelity, he loved you dearly and no one can take your place in his life. You even once had jokingly asked what he would do if you vanish from his life would he move on and he had just placed his hand on your mouth warily asking you to never ever say such a thing again or even think of leaving him.

After sometime one of his classmates Felicia waltzed her way up to him.

‘‘Hey Parker why are you standing here all alone?’’

‘‘No I’m fine-’’ by the time he would stop her she was already dragging him to the dancefloor. She pulled him closer, her back pressed against his chest as she took his hands and placed them on her waist. Peter felt awkward as he gently swayed with her. Soon she began grinding against making Peter feel uncomfortable. He thought whatever was happening wasn’t right he pushed her away from him as she turned around looking at him in shock and confusion.

‘‘I’m sorry I-I can’t’’ He stuttered nervously and rushed out of the room to the ground for some fresh air as he felt suffocated. Seeing the scene Emma Frost, another classmate of his followed him. Though he backed off Peter was still feeling guilty he felt he kind of cheated on you as you lay unconscious, tears pricked his eyes.

‘‘What’s your deal man?’’ Emma asks him from behind startling him.

‘‘Uh.. what?’’ He asks, quickly wiping his tears with his hands.

‘‘I just saw you leaving Felicia on the dance floor. Who does that?! Every guy in the college wants to be with her’’ she snickers

‘‘I’m not every guy. Moreover, I’m not interested’’ he says blandly.

‘‘Are you taken?’’ she looked at him skeptical and his silence gave away the answer.

‘‘Damn! She’s indeed a lucky girl’’ she exclaims ‘‘to have such a loyal boyfriend like you these days is very rare. Can I see one picture of your special one?’’ she asks excitedly to which Peter obliged with a smile as he took out his phone from his back pocket and showed her a picture of yours looking all radiant and happy in a sunflower field just like the flowers which he had clicked when you both went on a small trip.

‘‘Here she is’’

‘‘She is beautiful’’ Emma approves with a smile ‘‘So where is she? Another college or at a totally different country?’’ Peter’s expression fell as sadness took over his features; he took a long sigh before he answered her question.

"She’s at the brink of life and death and I'm just waiting for my princess to wake up"

Feeback and suggestions are always welcome.

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

Part 2

Requests are open.

Taglist : @peaches-parker @osterfieldshollandgirl @starcoadrienette2 @spideyth @allthisfortommy @thenoddingbunny-blog @larrystylinson-sus @bloodyscarlet @itstaskeen @dummiesshort @tutuabby28 @dramaholic18 @thehumanistsdiary @majo240820 @heyafellows @just-here-to-escape-from-reality @justafangirlduh @moniffazictress11   @goodgirlgonetom   @lyzalovealk @parkerpeterparker2004 @ladykxxx08 @joselyn001

[jetaime-jespere]

Old Times All Over (Part 1 of 2)

A very special thank you to @sequinsmile-x for the beta!

Exactly six months pass before he can’t stand it anymore.

Aaron takes a risk and goes to Emily while she's undercover in Paris.

Rating: M

Exactly six months pass before he can’t stand it anymore. The weight of her absence is unbearable; it follows him around as if lingering in hidden shadows and settling deep in his soul, an indelible stain that doesn’t fade as the days pass by. He bears the team’s grief, shoulders it and doesn’t let himself handle his own. It feels wrong to mourn her as if she were actually dead when in reality she lingers somewhere very different, another kind of hellish existence. He often finds himself wondering what she’d say about all of it. Emily would have scoffed at the ornate casket, rolled her eyes at the formality of the Catholic service the Ambassador insisted upon. He’d been the one to make the call on the flight back to DC. Elizabeth knew right away why he was calling, and the detached coldness in her tone was merely a coping mechanism, for the older woman’s grief seeped through the phone as he relayed the news. Aaron could scarcely reach her eyes as he offered condolences in person, the words heavy and thick on his tongue. Elizabeth’s questions were answered with the vague formalities that were constructed as part of a grand lie, held together with threads that ran the risk of being unraveled with the slightest misstep.

Read the rest below the cut or on Ao3

Emily’s life depended on the sanctity of those lies, as did his own.

No one can ever find out about this, JJ had whispered to Aaron and Clyde behind a firmly closed door in the depths of that hospital in Boston. It was eerily dark, their heads bent together in near silence as initial plans were laid. For her safety, and all of ours. It felt oddly conspiratorial to plan her disappearance as she laid just feet away, oblivious to it all and very much alive. But Doyle escaped into the night like a ghost, and that meant Emily had to go too whether they liked it or not. It didn’t matter that they hunted monsters like him every day. They knew the moment her heart started again, that she would pull through, that she’d never be free. He’ll never stop looking for her. Clyde’s voice was like rubbing salt in a wound that burned through his skin.The tension between them was thick, laden with the unspoken tension of a tentative truce and a keen awareness of the pain that coursed within each of them. He will go to the ends of the earth to find her.

Aaron disliked Clyde Easter from the moment he laid eyes on the man. Perhaps it was his closeness to Emily - she trusted him, more so than she did Aaron, as was being made abundantly clear. It still stung - that she’d gone to him in her moment of need without even once considering just maybe the team could have helped. Maybe it was the way Clyde knew her so intimately, almost as well as a lover would - a delicate balance of adoration and indignance, a fierce desire to protect the oaths they’d sworn years ago, loyalty and trust woven from years of brushes with peril only to do it all over again. But it was more than that; he knew from the moment Clyde sat before him in an interrogation room in Boston his loathing ran deep. Only later would Aaron realize they both paid a similar price for loving the same woman.

The idea to go to her comes to him once Dave has finally disappeared for the night and the bottle of scotch is empty once again. It’s a ritual they share now, unspoken yet expected, an attempt at burying the worst of their grief. It never quite hits the mark, because Dave doesn’t know the truth. His words are wise and well intended, but he speaks of loss in terms of death, and it’s one thing Aaron can’t think about for too long. But it’s some of the only company he has once the building quiets down, so whenever he shows up at the door, he doesn’t object. Most nights they leave together after a round. The echo of their shoes striking the marble floors is the only noise between them when they pass the framed photos of agents long gone on the walls, now with Emily among them. He wants to shake someone, tell them she doesn’t belong there. “Don’t look,” Dave tells him every time. “It won’t bring her back.”

He always looks.

Tonight Aaron lingers, the idea now an intrusive thought reverberating through his weary mind. It’s dangerous - violates every rule of her disappearance - and puts anyone who knows at risk. He shuffles the files on his desk only to do it once more, rearranges the pens in the cup and flips through a few reports that still require his signature. His phone rings; he doesn’t have to turn it over to know it’s Jessica asking where he is, that Jack is asking for him. He was supposed to have been home a few hours ago. Instead of answering that phone, he digs for a different one. This one has stayed hidden in his desk since the night they returned from Boston. Clyde had pushed it into his hand at the last possible moment before he boarded a flight, his face stony and solemn. “If you ever need to reach me, use this.” It might be the closest thing to a friendship they’ll ever have, a twisted kind of bond that comes along with a shared secret they very well might take to the grave.

“I was wondering when you would call,” comes the lilting British accent on the other end when the line connects. “I thought for sure it would be sooner.” Clyde’s voice is haunting; it takes Aaron right back to Boston when it was just the two of them in that interrogation room, piercing blue eyes up against his darker ones as the pieces fell into place. If you want to stop that man, you have to put a bullet between his eyes yourself. He barely recognizes his own voice; it strains when he explains exactly why he’s calling, once the doors of his office are firmly shut. Even then, it’s a near whisper.

“You do realize what you’re asking of me?” Clyde demands. He’s not exactly surprised by the request, though. After all, he and Aaron had a few things in common. “The risks of all of this?” He’s whispering, the hiss of his voice biting even from thousands of miles away, wherever the hell he might be. “I thought you did things by the book at the BAU.”

“Can you make it work or not?” Aaron’s terseness matches Clyde’s hostility, a thinly veiled shield for his grief that consumes him.

There’s a pause on the other end, followed by a contemplative inhale as if he’s considering his answer, like he holds the power in his hands himself. “You should have more faith in me, Agent Hotchner.”

...

It’s all a little too easy to coordinate once the initial call is made, much to his surprise. For two weeks, things continue as normal, or as close to normal as possible, a period of limbo-like freefall. A case takes them to Portland, another to Providence. While the team is across the country, Clyde takes care of the multiple identities and aliases Aaron will use in Europe, along with a reservation at a nondescript hotel and God only knows what else. He’s barely back in Virginia for an hour when a text message on the burner phone reveals a series of coordinates, a meeting location.

“A direct flight to Charles de Gaulle might seem suspect,” Clyde whispers, nestled amongst the shadows along the Potomac River three nights before Aaron slated to leave. “There’s a flight from Regan to Heathrow, then to Paris. You’ll have a different identity for each, so best not to get confused.”

Aaron bristles at the snarkiness in his tone. “And my cover story?”

Clyde scoffs, as if disgusted by the question. “You’ll tell your team you’re being called to London to consult with Scotland Yard as a favor to a friend. I’ve already taken care of those details as well - a fake case report. Familiarize yourself with them so they don’t suspect anything.” He passes over the thick envelope, holding onto it for just a moment too long.

“How will I find her? Once I’m there?”

“Leave that up to me, Aaron. She’ll be waiting for you.”

“Thank you,” is all Aaron can say once he holds the weight of it in his hands. “I know you took a huge risk to do this.”

Clyde stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets and shuffles his feet awkwardly. “I love her too, you know.” It’s certainly the most honest he’s ever been, something that looks like hurt flooding his features. But he stiffens a few seconds later with an authoritative clearing of his throat. “Bloody hell, Aaron, for all of our sakes, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

...

Aaron drops Jack off at Jessica’s. He relays the same details he told the team a few hours before with the same feigned degree of calm assurance and mock annoyance - just a few days away, work related. No one suspects a thing. In fact, the rest of them seem almost happy for him to go. “A change of scenery might be nice,” Dave says as they walk out of the BAU.

It’s risky, inherently a bad idea and yet, it isn’t enough to deter him. There’s an element of betrayal he feels for lying to the team, for they’re still reeling from their collective loss. They miss her just as much as he does; none of this is fair. He drowns it out with a pair of headphones and a stiff drink as the plane roars to life and lifts into the sky as the sun sets.

He wakes up hours later in London with a headache and an all too familiar ache in his chest.

…

It’s another few hours of travel before he actually lands in Paris. He’s completely focused, determined as he collects his luggage and leaves the airport. He destroys the first passport moments after the plane touches solid ground and tucks the next one in his jacket pocket for easy access, the others will stay safely in his travel bag. Aaron calls Clyde on a new burner phone, one of several included in the envelope of documents that was passed over in a shadowy spot by the Potomac. He answers on the first ring, doesn’t even bother with a greeting. Instead he rattles off an address Aaron commits to memory and adds, “she’ll be waiting for you,” before the line goes dead. The address, he soon finds, is a small cafe in the fifth Arrondissement, the Latin Quarter. At first it seems risky, to meet in public, but it’s probably safer than somehow having a record of her address.

The woman at the small table in the back of the cafe is inconspicuous, but he spots her immediately upon opening the door. She could be anyone; she fits right in. One slender leg crossed over the other, a chic knee-length boot peeking out under the table. A simple raincoat, hair cut just below her chin. It’s lighter than it was the last time he saw her but still a rich shade of brown.The only giveaway is the state of the nails on her right hand - not manicured, bit down and ragged. It’s her, exactly where Clyde said she would be. He doesn’t make a big show, just simply sits in the empty seat across from her, his heart pounding in his chest when he sees her face for the first time in months. Emily’s hand is unsteady as her fingers wrap around the espresso on the table. “I’ve been waiting.” It sounds formal; she makes no move to shake his hand or hug him, or display any bit of emotion, but her lips tremble and her eyes well up a little.

“I got a little lost along the way,” Aaron shrugs a little, keeping his tone light for any ears privy to their conversation. She smiles, probably picturing him lost on the maze-like streets of Paris, the streets that still don’t feel like home to her either. “I’m here now.” It carries more weight than it ever would; all he wants to do is touch her to prove to himself this isn’t just part of the fucking nightmare he’s lived since March, one he’ll wake from wrapped in sheets damp with sweat and a pounding heart. She’s very much real, very much alive in front of him, but what the Emily he sees isn’t the Emily he remembers. Paris might be beautiful but it hasn’t been kind to her. She’s thinner and paler, shades of exhaustion on her face. Over the years Aaron has seen her sleep deprived more times than he could count - the toll of back to back cases added up - but this is something else entirely. It’s the culmination of fear from constantly looking over her shoulder, the toll of the unknown. Would Doyle ever stop looking for her, or would the rest of her days be spent on the run, alone, days that blend into weeks into months and years? Would she ever come home, to the only family she’s really ever had?

Emily studies him too, undoubtedly shocked at what she sees. Time hasn’t been kind to him, either. He’s a shell of what he used to be. A subtle shadow on his face that’s new, he’s weary eyed and tense. She knows it’s not because of the better part of a day he’s spent traveling - it’s much more than that. It’s a haunting look, with the memory of how quickly things spiraled out of control. He’d been helpless to stop any of it; Emily knows the blame he places on himself. If their hurried goodbye in the hospital was any indicator of the torment of what he’s been through the last six months, then she knows it’s been hell for him. Just like it’s been for her. She pushes another espresso, this one untouched, in his direction. “How much time do you have?” English feels foreign on her tongue. It’s been weeks, months maybe, since she’s had a real conversation not in French. It’s an act. This is all an act, but one her life depends on. Every minute she spends walking the arrondissements is a risk. The fear curls around her spine a little too tightly. She glances around the coffee shop, eyes scanning through without spending too long on any one thing. It can’t look obvious, only effortless.

“Not nearly enough.” Aaron wonders how much she knows about this, just what Clyde told her about the logistics of his visit. “We have about forty eight hours.”

He doesn’t miss the longing, wistful look in her eyes when she nods, the slightest tip of her head. It’s not enough time, it never will be. But it’s all they have, all they might ever have. They speak in short sentences, vague and cryptic, as they sip the espresso. It’s stronger than he expected, she seems immune to its effects. She doesn’t call him Aaron, and he’s careful not to call her Emily. He doesn’t know her new name, either. Not even Clyde could give him that information - it was probably better that way. They make superficial conversation - the rain here and the heat there, the bakery on the corner with chocolate croissants and the headlines on the newspaper that sits on the table. He plays along as she explains, as if he fits into this world she’s had no other choice but to assimilate into. To anyone in the cafe, they could be old friends, lovers even, with years of history between them, a casual intimacy spun like a web. The ease of lulls in conversation, a subtle glance every so often, the comfort of the proximity of someone else.

And hidden somewhere in their conversation, behind a facade of lies, is something else. What no one knows, what they haven’t quite managed to forget themselves, is something happened between them once before.

...

It was spring, after the dust had settled from Foyet and the world started to turn again, albeit slowly. Only when things settled into a new kind of normal - the humble experience of single parenting, relying on Jessica like he never had before - did Aaron realize something had changed between them. Perhaps it was the unwavering way Emily stood by him even when he wouldn’t admit to needing it, or how she picked up his loose ends without making him feel like his life was unraveling before his eyes. It was the way she mourned Haley’s death, a steadfast presence at her funeral, and her attentiveness to Jack in the months after.

He’d been divorced for more than a year, separated for at least two. Aaron no longer mourned his marriage, but the loss of his son’s mother, the woman he’d shared more than half of his life with. But someone else started to preoccupy his mind - dark hair, a blinding grin, a wicked sense of humor. It was becoming harder to ignore; she was everywhere. So a few months later in the spring, when he found Emily, nursing a drink at the hotel bar that had clearly seen better days, after a particularly brutal case in Scranton, he knew exactly how the night would end. It would cross a line - railroad through any professional boundary they still maintained. But an unsub had walked free earlier that night, a child was dead, and while it wasn’t her fault, he watched any trace of composure vanish from her face when they got back to the hotel as she retreated into herself.

It shouldn’t have happened that way - definitely not how he imagined it would. But Emily was desperate in her need to forget, he was desperate to help her do so. It was frantic, the clash of her teeth against his an ironic reminder that this was the first time he ever kissed her. Aaron pressed her back against the wall, sucked a bruise into her neck, and buried himself inside of her with one smooth push. He swallowed her moans with his mouth, the snap of his hips brutal and sharp. She reveled in it, her need for him and this, legs hitched over his hips as she clenched around him.

“Wanted you for so long,” he growled as she came around him. Her fingers were like vices around his shoulders, clinging to him as he fucked her through it, unrelenting. “Thought about you, about this.”

“Me too,” Emily gasped, the simple admission triggering his own release until he came apart and took her with him one more time.

Aaron had to carry her to the bed in the middle of his hotel room. It was the most gentle he’d been all evening, gingerly placing her in the center of it, following her down and pulling her into his arms. She was bruised and sore, he wore the scratches of her nails on his back and shoulders. Emily curled into him like she’d been doing it forever, snuggling into his chest. “I still can’t feel my legs.”

“We should have done that a long time ago,” he mused into the darkness, dragging his fingertips down her spine, listening to her slow, even breaths. It’s an admission more than an observation, and the low laugh that comes from her is all the confirmation he needs to know she thinks the same thing.

It happened again hours later, in the middle of the night, this time softer, slow and unhurried. He made her come twice with his mouth, coaxing her through each one. Aaron took his time, marveling at her and whispering praises into her skin. She beamed under his touch, besotted under his gaze. He studied the sharpness of her ribs, the curve of her waist, the length of her legs. And then he held her hands in his own above her head, rocking into her, metronomic and even. He kissed her like a lover should, his lips still wet with her slick, her legs pressed tightly wrapped around his waist as she crested against him. He collapsed against her shortly after, grappling for her hands, leaving kisses along her collarbones - anything to be as close to her as he possibly could.

But it was over after that.

Timing once again failed them. Not because they didn’t have the chance, but because they were both afraid something would change, whatever friendship they built over time, and they wouldn’t be able to take it back. They never talked about it, never even acknowledged anything had happened in that hotel room in Scranton once it was over. It lingered between them, the awareness of it sometimes all-consuming if she got too close or they somehow ended up sitting beside one another on the jet. But things happened - JJ’s untimely departure, coupled with Seaver’s arrival, the grueling toll of case after case. It was buried, hidden behind the burden of their jobs and the baggage they carried, both too stubborn to admit what was right in front of them.

And then she slipped away, shortly after a case in Montana. Emily’s typical professionalism, her unmatched level of skill was marred by uncharacteristic lateness and a short fuse, as if something had settled into her mind that she couldn’t shake. She was secretive and jumpy, slowly withdrawing from them all before his own eyes. And he’d been too caught up in what they weren’t saying, what they were hiding from, to even ask what was wrong.

Aaron never saw it coming. Until it was too late.

…

The cafe suddenly feels suffocating, the four walls trapping them in. What started as an alluring scent of coffee beans and freshly baked pastries now feels cloying, overwhelming. It’s just a little too loud as their conversation fades into silence. After all, there’s only so much small talk that can be made when he only has one question. Why? Across from him Emily shifts in her chair yet still wears her pleasant smile, still playing the act she’s perfected over the last several months. But she’s tearing at her fingernails, a sure sign that she’s nervous. He knows her tells by now, all of them. “What do we do now?” She asks, her voice barely audible. Whether it’s intentional or not he isn’t sure,

He leans in, takes her hand in his own. “Let’s get out of here.”

[mc-lukanette]

do you have any lukanette ideas with chat/adrien salt? the newest episode reignited my annoyance towards him and his stans acting like he didn’t do anything wrong is not helping. i mean, flirting with ladybug while he’s dating kagami? getting excited over a possible akumatization?? and since i know that behavior won’t be addressed bc adrien is “perfect” and “the love square is endgame” therefore he gets a pass for any bad behavior, i was hoping for some fanmade salt (and lukanette is always a great addition to any story)

I can appreciate how starved you guys are to hear me salt on this blog.

But yeah, I came up with something considering that quite a bit of Chat’s behavior happens before Truth appears in “Lies.”

So hear me out--

Truth is a threat, considering that Luka is the only hero outside of Ladybug intended to be a planner. All others take orders directly from Ladybug herself, but Viperion could plan on his own.

This means that Truth realizes quickly that his strategy of asking for the heroes’ identities isn’t going to work because they’ll shout over him every time. He has to get creative and comes up with the idea to divide the heroes.

He comments on their teamwork, perhaps saying vaguely about how their teamwork can’t outmatch his and Pharo’s. Chat obviously takes the bait, talking on and on about how he and Ladybug are the best team and that they’re made for each other.

“Really?” Truth asks casually. “You’ve never done anything against her?”

Chat Noir responds, his white lips moving to say, “Of course I have!”

Ladybug gapes, and Chat looks calm for a second before his eyes immediately widen in panic.

He tries to say that it’s not what he means, but Truth’s power is active, so he just blurts out, “That’s exactly what I mean!”

He tries to cover his mouth with his non-Cataclysm hand, but gets shot by Pharo.

“I told Theo Barbot that we were dating and it got him akumatized!”

“You did what?!” Ladybug asks, having never heard this before.

Chat doesn’t stop - he can’t - and his mouth keeps moving. He admits that he sacrifices himself because he knows it won’t matter since Ladybug will fix it, and it means he’ll always leave an impression on her. He admits that he didn’t care when Nadja or Alya were egging on the LadyNoir ship because he feels like Ladybug will come around eventually. He admits that he doesn’t take her seriously when she goes off on him because “she’s cute when she’s angry.” He admits that he wanted an akuma to happen even though he knew Ladybug was busy, just because he wanted to spend time with her. He admits to telling his kwami he’d quit while Paris was underwater if he didn’t spill what Ladybug was hiding.

Honestly, even Truth at this point is like, “man I wanted to divide your teamwork, not your entire relationship.”

Ladybug eventually manages to snap out of her trance and deal with the whole situation (mostly by herself), but the damage is done. Even after the akuma has been purified and Truth turns back into Luka, Chat’s words linger and Ladybug ignores him.

“Are you okay, Luka?”

“Huh? Ah, yeah, thanks...”

Chat is awkwardly standing nearby, his tail in both hands as he fiddles with it. “So--ah... Bugaboo--”

“Don’t,” Ladybug cuts in, not even looking at him. “Is that why you use that nickname when I’m mad? To butter me up? Try to earn points? Do you think it’s funny?”

“No, no!” He waves his hands frantically. “It’s not--”

“See, the thing is that now I won’t know whether you’re lying or not,” she points out, the situation feeling all to familiar to when Tikki lied to her, only this was worse. She honestly wanted to trust Chat Noir; he was her partner, irreplaceable in the sense that he was there from the start.

But maybe not irreplaceable elsewhere.

“I wouldn’t lie to you!” he swears.

“But you’ll keep things from me,” she counters. She sighs, gently taking Luka’s hand and helping him stand, then addressing him as she says, “I’ll take you home, alright?”

Luka’s gaze briefly flickers between the two of them, but he asks no questions and nods. “Thank you.”

She guides him up the staircase to take him up to the balcony, Chat Noir rushing over to stand at the bottom of the steps.

“M’lady--!”

Ladybug turns to him with a silencing glare. “I really don’t want to be around you right now. We’ll talk later when I’m ready.”

(He’s going to be in for a long talk when they finally meet back up again, and suddenly, he isn’t so eager for an akuma to come rushing by to force them to come back together as a team.)

And with that, Ladybug goes up to the balcony, takes Luka in her arms, and leaves. Things are quiet at first, her taking in a few breaths of the night air as she tries to relax.

The past few days had been a mess, and that was putting it lightly. The kwami, dating, the akuma (that Chat Noir had apparently been soooo excited about), and now this big revelation. The stress must show on her face too, as she can occasionally feel Luka’s concerned gaze on her.

In a way, it’s nice, just having her boyfriend care like this, even when she’s in a mask. He’d put up with way more for her than she felt like he should’ve, and she knew that he’d disagree if she even dared to voice that thought.

Without really thinking, she starts talking to him. She talks about Ladybug, about everything; being thrown into this life that she didn’t ask for, and being happy to save Paris but sad at the emotional toll it takes. She tells him about all the friends who tease her for her lateness, and while it might’ve been funny at first - she was genuinely absent-minded at times - it doesn’t become as funny when knowing that it was something that couldn’t be helped.

“...I’m sorry you’re going through that,” Luka says in an offer of comfort. He sighs, not recoiling from her but it feels like he’s distant anyway. “I know it didn’t help that I was akumatized. I hope I didn’t do anything to Marinette.”

Her gaze softens; of course he’s thinking of her again. It’s Luka, she has no right to be surprised.

Chat Noir, meanwhile, was just thinking of himself.

“Actually,” she corrects, something occurring to her, “I think you might’ve helped in your own way.”

Luka tilts his head at her, puzzled.

She changes course just slightly, specifically to a spot not too far from the Liberty; one that is very familiar to both of them, and she can tell by the way his brows raise that he’s surprised by where she’s about to land.

Underneath the bridge, in the spot where he’d initially asked her - when she was Marinette - where she’d always been going, just before he got akumatized.

She sets him down, then paces around to try and clear her head.

“...Like I said, I didn’t get a lot of choice in this,” she begins. “I tried to give my miraculous up once in the beginning, but there was so much pressure and everything was going wrong. Then, things would just--happen around me, things that I couldn’t really think of--and this is coming from me!” She turns to him dramatically, gesturing to herself. “I imagine things going wrong all the time and I still can’t predict when they actually do!”

Luka chuckles lightly at that, but otherwise stays quiet, unsure of where she’s going with this but giving her his full attention.

“Me becoming the new guardian of the miraculouses so out of nowhere... it was a lot, and suddenly I had a bunch of kwami around my room who all wanted to get into my stuff or mess around. I didn’t choose to let them out; it just happened when I was trying to see how the box with all the miraculouses worked.” She groans a bit, rubbing her forehead as she paces around again. “Then in came Shadow Moth and all the akuma showing up, and now I’m even busier. I can’t even make time for my boyfriend.”

There’s a flicker of emotion in Luka’s eyes at that, but he doesn’t say anything, though his fingers twitch slightly at his sides.

“Then--” She looks down. “--there’s Chat Noir. I didn’t choose him either; the old guardian chose him for me, and he wasn’t even fully trained. I was Chat’s partner and that was it; I didn’t get a choice to give up, it just... was, and I have to deal with whatever the relationship--” She makes a face at the word. “--we have is, because if something goes wrong then everything can go wrong, and then Paris is in danger.”

She shakes her head, realizing that she’s rambling. She continues staring quietly at the ground, then releases the tenseness in her shoulders.

“But...” She looks up to meet Luka’s gaze. “I did choose you, Luka. I finally got to choose something for me, and the only thing I regret about it is everything that I can’t choose. You chose me and I chose you and...” She almost laughs. “It’s weird that it’s that simple for once.”

He’s clearly pieced the puzzle together by now but hasn’t quite processed the result. She can see the whisper of her name on his lips and she smiles at him, taking a step back and spreading her arms wide.

“You’re my real partner, Luka. You get me, you care about me, and we’re similar but different and it’s great.” She swallows, feeling her nerves building a little but pushing forward enthusiastically nonetheless. “So I want to make a choice for us, because we trust each other and I want to give you something no one else has.”

Then, she closes her eyes, taking a breath and briefly tightening her hands into fists.

“Tikki, spots off.”

[its-nebula]

V3 Boys x Inhuman!S/O

Your creature is: Angel

He always did feel that you brought sunshine and guidance into his life.

He just didn't know that it was literally your job to do so.

Still, you were an anomaly to him. You were just so perfect, so pure. And yet, the aura you radiated was just so powerful.

Shuichi found himself having less nightmares. Instead, you almost always found a way into his dreams, not that he was complaining.

He did, however appreciate whenever you offered him advice. You always knew the right thing to do, and he knew that he could always count on you.

"I had a feeling that it wasn't the right call. Wow, S/O, you really are wise!"

As a detective, however, he has a natural curiosity and drive to explain things that are unexplainable.

How do you get things right so often?

And everytime you got a scratch or cut, no matter how large or small, it was practically fully healed by the next day?

Hmmm...

Your creature is: Demon

You seriously needed to walk on eggshells around your boyfriend if you didn't want to be found out.

Literally all he does is study rituals that could be potentially harmful to you.

You love him anyways, though, which is the main reason you can't let him in on your identitiy.

You did your absolute best to keep Korekiyo out of harm's way.

Whenever you felt the negative energy someone possesed, you had no problem telling them to stay away from your boyfriend.

He really values having peace, so he makes sure to thank you for driving away any negative people.

"Oh, S/O, my darling, how I'm always so appreciative of you keeping me in your best interests."

He always feels a little hurt when you won't join him in studying his rituals, though.

"My darling, is something wrong? I'm not making you uncomfortable, am I?"

You always have to sweat nervously and come up with an excuse.

Your creature is: Unicorn

An interesting pair for sure.

But you made it work.

Kokichi was very nosy, so hiding was a bit difficult. However, you were used to masking your true identity, so you found ways.

Your boyfriend also being a little gremlin, you had to protect him at all times.

But he's Kokichi, so he pretends he doesn't like it.

"Jeeeeeez, S/O, I don't need you following me around all the time!"

You're not immortal, but you've lived much longer than Kokichi. You've met kind people, mean people, evil people, good people, honest people, and liars. You knew he was lying.

Surprisngly to you as well, he was very prone to feelings of deep sadness and loneliness, like a dark cloud was hanging over his head.

You may or may not use your magic to drive away any negative thoughts that he may have about himself.

He's in denial that he feels better around you...because he's Kokichi and it scares him.

"Yeah, you're alright to have around. The perfect prank target!"

😑😑😑😑😑

Your creature is: Werewolf

The guy is very reclusive, so he really doesn't care when you tend to keep your distance out of fear of being found out.

"I'm too dangerous for you anyways, S/O. Maybe you should just go find someone better..."

He even suspected you of cheating when you kept going out at night, but didn't bother to say anything.

You would never even think of leaving Ryoma, and it made you a little bit sad he would even think of that. You knew it wasn't his fault, though.

One thing you did dislike about him, though, was the fact he was a cat person. Every time his cat hissed at you, you did a low growl bsck, scaring it off. Only when you're alone with her do you growl, however.

"Guess she doesn't like you, huh? I'm sorry about that."

You always smile so sweetly at him, reassuring him that it's okay.

Whenever you two go out, you make sure to let everyone know that you weren't messing around.

If they say something, you walk up to them and bear your teeth, and they take off in the other direction.

"Typical... even strangers don't want to be around me."

Somebody please get this man some therapy.

Your creature is: Shinigami

For the most part, life is pretty normal for the two of you.

Gonta doesn't really get himself into troubling situations, so you don't really have to worry about sentencing him to death.

Anyone who hurts him, however?

That's a different story.

You try not to kill too many people, though, as you know that's not what Gonta would want.

He gets really confused when one of his bugs sting you and you don't even flinch.

"S/O! Gonta sorry about bee! S/O isn't hurting?!"

You make up a reason, and he just goes along with it.

If ever a time does come when you have to sentence Gonta, you have to decide.

Will you save his life and sacrifice yours, or let him die in a peaceful way and let him rest?

What will you do?

Your creature is: Wendigo

It's pretty easy to get past Kiibo.

Although he may find it a little bit strange how you almost never seem to get very hungry, or eat...

He doesn't question it.

After all, all humans are different! He's read up on this thing they have called "metabolism". Yours is probably just really slow!

"Um, S/O are you positive that you'll be okay?"

As easy as it was, though, you didn't feel right murdering and eating innocent people behind your unknowing boyfriend. So, you went to the nearest prison, found a person who was on Death Row, and decided to just feast on them.

Hey, they were going to die anyways, and they were a criminal.

Still, you couldn't help but feel a little guilty looking into your boyfriend's oh-so innocent eyes.

"Don't worry, S/O! There's apparently someone who's been breaking into prisons and murdering inmates, but I'll do my best to protect you to the very end!!!"

He's Baby.

Your creature is: Unicorn

He gets very upset time to time, whenever he thinks about his sisters.

Obviously, you use your powers to help him search.

"I refuse to give up. With you by my side, S/O, I just know that we can find them...together."

You have ultrasound, and you use it to listen for any sounds, or get any hints at all.

When you're both riding in the boat, you use protection charms to make sure no sharks or other dastardly sea creatures disturb you.

You also use one to prevent the two of you from getting seasick.

You also use any powers you have to try and ward away Rantaro's negative thoughts or any self-doubt, but it doesn't always work.

It makes you feel bad that your powers can only do so much. All you wanted was to find his sisters.

But you wouldn't give up, not now and not ever. You had to be strong for each other. You just knew that one day you would find them, all 12 of them.

"I know it's going to be a struggle, but we can do it."

Your creature is: Wendigo

Kaito was one of the only ones who had just the utmost belief in you, and it always made you feel bad for being a literal cannibal.

He was very proud when you announced your new job at a prison.

"Helping those in need! That's so awesome, S/O!"

Heh...yeeaaaahhhhhh.

You kept the eating to an absolute minimum.

Whenever Kaito offered to train with you, you thought it was a little funny to mess with him by a little bit.

You had superhuman strength and speed, so you always beat him in foot races and bench pressing.

"Huh?! No fair, I thought I would beat you this time!"

He's not a sore loser, however. He uses it as motivation.

"Well...! I'll just have to train even harder so that I can for sure catch up to you next time!"

If you think about it, you were technically helping him.

You also had a great amount of intelligence, and you used it to help Kaito with his astronaut needs. Calculations and such.

"Thanks, babe! You're the best! I can't wait to live out my dream with you!"