DP x DC Prompt
…
There are no more heroes.
Well, okay. Rewind a bit.
Danny has been doing the hero thing for a while now. He’s had a big reveal; everyone has accepted him (including his parents), the GIW disbanded, the Anti-Ecto acts repealed, and generally, everything is going great. Some of the A-Listers are even training as junior ghost hunters to help give him a break from his rogues! (Being Ghost King makes things hectic sometimes, and he just needs the extra help. Sue him!)
The point is, literally nothing is wrong with Danny Phantom’s afterlife.
And then Valerie Gray, the Red Huntress, disappears in front of his eyes.
Danny is baffled! She’s just…gone! Valerie just popped out of existence, like she was never there. But no matter how hard he searches in the Ghost Zone, he can’t find her soul anywhere. His core isn't broken in grief. So she’s not dead. Which is good. So then, where is she?
Some of the others come forward with ideas on how to find her. A few ghosts volunteer to go out into the mortal realm, an area Danny had declared off-limits, to see if she was out there. Danny approves it. He rounds up some of the friendlier (i.e., discreet) ghosts and Amity Parkers and demolishes the outside travel ban.
So everyone spreads out, looking for their dear frenemy and teammate. But it becomes apparent very quickly that something is wrong with the rest of the world.
There are no more heroes.
Every single living superhero on the face of the Earth has just…vanished. Villains are running amok; the countries are in chaos! Some aliens are invading Earth, mythical deities are trying to take over, and society is crumbling to the ground. Everything is on the brink of collapse.
Well, Danny was still there. And so were his people. They were pretty spread out, so could they just…take up the mantles? He also knew where to find the souls of dead heroes in the Zone; surely they wouldn't mind coming out of retirement for a little bit, especially if they couldn't die again. Oh! And that skeleton army leftover from Pariah Dark's reign might be useful in repelling those invading forces.
Honestly, there were more than enough hands to go around! And with the heroes gone, Danny didn't mind letting everyone out for a little break, as long as they followed his rules. They wouldn't stop the search for the other heroes, but hopefully, when they found them, the heroes wouldn't mind Danny's intervention too much. :)
In other words:
Someone fucks up, and all of Earth's living heroes are either wished out of existence or are whisked away to some far-off realm where Danny hasn't checked yet. In the attempt to figure out what's going on, Danny lets the dead run amok over the Earth as they search for clues. The skeleton army repels the invading armies, the souls of dead heroes deal with the world leaders, and his rogues and other Amity Parkers set up shop in place of famous heroes, trying to get the cities under control again.
Basically, they just do their best to keep everything from imploding until the Justice League and others are back.
(And why is it that Danny hasn't disappeared? Well, whatever caused everyone to go poof! only affected living heroes. Anyone heroes that were dead in the first place, or even just half-dead, stayed behind.)
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I have had a thought. Steve secretly knowing how to play the piano bc he learned as a kid and had to stop bc his dad's an asshole is lovely. I've seen this floating around a few times and I love it. Eddie catching him playing the piano and being so fucking in love with him will never not be perfect.
But.
Consider
Steve playing the Harp.
It's definitely a rich kid instrument. Big ass fucking impractical instrument. Absolutely beautiful to look at and listen to. Hands playing piano is great. But have you ever seen an accomplished harpist? It makes you think impure thoughts about what those fingers can do.
So. Steve secretly knowing how to play the harp
Maybe his mom used to play it, so there's a big harp (the ones with the columns and super intricate base board, not celtic) that's just gathering dust in the basement. Steve started piano lessons, loved learning how to pull music out of an inert object. But his dad decides it's to effeminate, makes him stop. And sure, a harp is a different beast to a piano. But you've still got cords, and Steve's got a pretty decent ear, and he can barely remember seeing his mom play. So one day when he has the house to himself, which isn't an unusual occurrence at this point, he tries it out. And he's admittedly pretty shit at it, but so was he at piano when he started. Only difference is he has no teacher.
So maybe Steve discreetly finds a way to acquire a beginner's practice instructional book for harp. And works on it when he needs to get his brain away from things.
He's even more careful with it than he is with any dirty mags he might later acquire. He knows that worse, much worse than piano, harp is not a masculine instrument and under no circumstances should his father find out about his affinity for it.
It's still his go to when he can't sleep even years later, pulling out the now old and battered booklet of sheet music and exercises. Especially once the upside down bullshit starts. It's soothing and mindless at this point.
The harp that was much too big when he first started with it is now just the right size, it's weight against his shoulder comforting. He can close his eyes and his fingers naturally find where to land and pluck.
Even when he becomes friends with Robbin and then Eddie, both musicians who he knows wouldn't give a damn about him playing a woman's instrument, he can't bring himself to mention it. If he did, they would want to hear him play and he's self-conscious about being self-taught. Both of them play well, they play with other people and people come to listen. He doesn't consider himself a "real" musician. It's just something he does to keep his hands and brain busy on nights where the sheets feel like they're strangling him and the dark reminds him too much of when he can't see not because it's night but because something's hit him in the head again and he can't tell apart the sound of his heartbeat from something pounding through his walls.
So he goes to the basement. Finds his stool. Removes the dust cover. Goes through the meditative motions of tuning it by ear, because that's how he's always done it. And then he plays until the tips of his fingers feel numb. Somehow, he always comes out of it peaceful enough to pass out on the couch in the basement for a couple more hours.
Steve is so used to keeping it a secret he doesn't even think about it when he starts dating Eddie. It's just a thing that's always only been his, and most importantly, it's been vital to keep it that way for so long it's the natural state of things for Steve at this point. It doesn't ever come up. When Steve gets nightmares when he's sleeping with Eddie all he has to do is curl into his boyfriend's chest and feel the warm heartbeat that's not his own to settle back into himself.
The problem arises on a night when Eddie was supposed to stay with Steve but he got held up in Indianapolis when getting a new amp for his guitar. He would come back to Steve but it would be late in the night. Steve has been keeping himself busy all day so he passes out in the early evening on the couch in front of a shitty sitcom he put on to try to distract himself from the empty house.
Nightmares find him, which isn't terribly unusual, but he doesn't have his usual method of coping so he resorts back to his previous habit.
Eddie walks in bone tired after many hours of driving to and from Indianapolis, waiting while the clerk figured out they didn't have the amp he'd been assured over the phone would be available for pickup today, waiting some more while they had the amp driven from a sister shop an hour away because no way was he driving back and forth again to Indianapolis on another day. So yeah. Eddie is beat. All he wants is to dive head first into his boyfriend's impeccable pecs.
He doesn't find Steve waiting with a welcome kiss like he usually would when he walks in. Instead he's greeted with a hauntingly beautiful rendition of the melody of Master of Puppets in a way he's never heard before.
He drops his stuff in the entry hall and goes down to the basement where the music is coming from, curious to see where Steve might have found the recording. Eddie doesn't quite know what to do with himself when he finally lays eyes on Steve, with dried tear stains on his cheeks and his eyes closed as his fingers pluck and strum without hesitation. He's rooted to the spot as he watches Steve work his favorite song in a new and completely heartrending way. He hasn't been able to listen to it since he played it in the upside down. It always brings up the bitter blood tang of the air and the hair raising shrieks of the bats. But this is somehow different, it's soft and melodious but it's still got the same bones.
Eddie feels tears on his own cheeks. He's missed this song goddammit. And he couldn't be happier that it's Steve that's given it back to him
Queue tears and fear and confessions and comfort. Somehow much later in the future there's inexplicably a harp in some of the corroded coffin tracks. And it shouldn't work but it does
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We are 9 episodes in on My Stand In and I'm still hissing at my screen every time Sol shows up.
That man was really out here ranting and raving and being all WHY AREN'T YOU GUYS MAD about Ming as if he was the one being wronged like Joe didn't whole ass watch his damn body be cremated the day before. He really thinks he a main character and he's not even the possible second choice love interest.
Like he really dragged Joe away while he was calling for Ming and then told Joe to snap out of it cause Ming doesn't love him. Good to see he's still willing to physically drag Joe away from things he doesn't like, no matter what Joe wants, even in his second life.
He also has the audacity to be out here refusing to read the damn room and see that Joe looks uncomfortable AF anytime he drops a random "I care about you so much" line because it's not needed nor appreciated. He smooth brought Joe into his press conference to call him his boyfriend! And we all know good and damn well Joe wouldn't have agreed to that.
And then he was out here trying to fight Ming at the afterparty saying he doesn't give a fuck knowing good and damn well it would be Joe's ass if a public fight happened because he is the most unknown of the unknowns, while Ming's family is wealthy and Sol is, at the very least, semi-famous.
He's just always talking mad shit about how Ming is terrible and how he wants to save Joe from him and blah blah, but then he's instigating fights with Ming left and right. And personally, if I knew my friend was with a shitty man, I wouldn't keep antagonizing that man knowing my friend is the one who's dealing with the consequences every time. But I would actually want better for my friend because I care about them as a person and not as an ideal image I built in my head of someone I want to date. And that is clearly where Sol and I differ.
Like Ming is a delusional asshole, no argument there, but Sol is a Nice Guy and nah. I want him GONE. Let him go back to Korea and get some dick there. Cause he's not an option for Joe, nor was he ever at any point during this show, yet he really thinks he has relevancy here. Ming is better than me (or more insecure) cause I would have long since told Sol you don't compare when you don't compete.
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