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phantomrose96 · 4 months

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Sham Sacrifice: Chapter 2

(Sham Sacrifice: Chapter 1)

Chapter 2, because @ciestess voiced an idea that absolutely consumed my entire mind and I could not rest until I made this

...

Danny’s eyes tracked the swing of gunfire raining bullets across the horizon. Tucker reloaded, crouched, dodged left and pivoted, another blast of bullet confetti launched through a gaggle of zombie heads. He tossed the magazine and reloaded. Click. Ching. Danny flinched when a zombie smashed a hammer clean through Tucker’s head.

“God. Fucking…” Tucker pulled out of his hunch. He unclamped his fingers from his controller like bug legs unfurling. He extended the controller to Danny, bouncing it in his grip. “Your turn.”

“Huh?” Danny asked, as if he hadn’t been watching Tucker’s game the whole time.

“You. You’re up. I died.”

Danny accepted the controller, reloaded the screen, and jogged about a hundred feet forward before the first horde of zombies took him out football-style from the left. The death screen rolled.

“Oops,” Danny said.

“Not your best work.” And Tucker took the controller back. Tucker shot a few spare glances to Danny while the level restart loaded in. “Is it Vlad?”

“No. Well, yes,” Danny answered, flopping back into his normal position on the Foley attic armchair. Tucker’s mom had planned to toss it ages ago, before it became Danny’s chair. “But at least he left when my parents went all zombie mode into the basement.” Danny picked absently at the scabs of leather flaking from the armrest. “It was just weird.”

“I don’t mean this as an insult, but it’s definitely not the first time your dad’s gotten some math wrong,” Tucker said. “He blows up like three things a week doesn’t he?”

“He does. But he doesn’t care when he gets that math wrong. This one was like I broke something important.” Danny’s expression soured, and he picked a leather flake clean off the chair. “Vlad did, I mean.”

“Does any of the math actually work?” Sam offered from Tucker’s desk. She leaned an elbow around the back of his chair, head tilted to Danny. A pencil dangled from her loose fingers, nib-half worn to the History of an Invention report she was actually working on. Tucker had half-assed his earlier in the day about the palm pilot. Danny had not done his. “Like, it’s all crackpot theory, right? Do ghosts even follow math?”

“I think they follow some math. It’s not magic that makes the ecto-bazookas work, or the Fenton-phones work, or—well the thermos DIDN’T work—until I made it work.”

The unspoken thing Danny had been not-quite-saying hung in the air. He said it this time.

“So I’m wondering if I did it. Like the Fenton thermos. And now maybe they’re gonna do the math all over and realize the missing piece of the equation is one half-ghost son.”

“Well the order is backwards, for starters,” Sam said. “Thermos worked because you pumped ghost-energy into it. How would you have done that to the portal? You were human when you walked in.”

“Sam’s right. What do you think you brought to the table exactly? Button-slapping abilities?” Tucker loaded up the next level. “It was their portal, and their math, and it worked. There’s a million-billion kinds of math and they probably just forgot one thing.”

Tucker took a headshot and died. Mechanically, he handed the controller back to Danny.

“Yeah, probably.”

“Ask Vlad. He’s got a portal.”

“Like Vlad’s gonna tell me.”

“Just promise to be his diligent little son minion or whatever. He’s easy. Wait, let me do the next level. You know I like the cyberpunk levels.”

“It’s not your turn,” Danny said, reeling the controller just out of Tucker’s wiggling grasp.

“I’ll let you do two in a row for your next turn.”

Danny knocked Tucker away, distracted just long enough for a zombie cyberbeam to launch from the horizon and take him out through the head.

The screen washed sepia. Danny stared at it. You died.

…

Danny hadn’t really meant to stay the night at Tucker’s place. They’d just gotten really far in Man vs. Zombie, and Sam had gone home, and Danny was just resting his eyes between his turns with the controller.

So when he woke to the bright strip of sunlight beaming into his eyes through the attic skylight, his first thought was Fuck.

He was awake, here, morning, school. Fuck he had not actually done his History of Invention report, despite the stupid amount of grief it had already caused him this weekend. He pulled his face out of the armrest, now pineapple-patterned from the decaying leather, and pawed for his phone fallen on the floor. If it was still early enough, he could maybe still afford to desperately half-ass something before sixth period science.

He flipped his phone open. A text from Jazz. “Don’t come home. Make up an excuse.”

“…Fuck,” Danny whispered, through the sensation of his heart launching itself into his throat.

He scrambled upright, whole body shaking at the mercy of adrenaline shock so soon after being pulled from dead sleep. His mouth was dry, teeth unbrushed, wearing his old clothes from yesterday, report not done, Don’t come home, Don’t come home, Don’t come home.

They knew. He’d fucked it up. Somehow they knew. The math. Something. And it had to be with guns blazing, because Jazz would not send that text if they’d taken the “We accept you” angle.

Were they coming for him? On their way here? Tracking by his phone? Did they like Mrs. Foley enough to not SWAT-slam her against the wall when she opened the door for them so they could come capture the ghost pretending to be their son?

Fuck.

Danny was upright. Danny was standing. Danny was shaking. Danny wasn’t actually sure what the next thing was he was supposed to do.

Tucker’s ball of blankets rustled from the couch. “Mmph?” he asked, articulately.

“I have to. Go deal with my parents, I think,” Danny said, because any plan felt a little better than no plan. “I think they know.”

Danny was a ghost. Danny was gone. Tucker sat upright, alone, blinking himself awake. He was staring at the You Died sepia screen still displayed on monitor, now burnt into the plasma of the tv.

…

Danny paused with his human hand slick on the Fenton front door. The gears in his mind turned as his plan quickly unraveled into no-plan. He had no plan, right? What was his plan? Handle this Man vs Zombie style—open the front door ready to dodge wide, because both zombies and parents liked to camp behind closed doors with bazookas at the ready?

“—absolutely absurd, and entirely unscientific, with no probability of being true. It goes against everything we know about neurology.”

Oh, Jazz. Was Jazz enough of a bazooka-deterrent? Probably not. Knowing his parents.

Danny turned the knob. His heart hammered. If bazookas, dodge left.

The first thing he noticed was in fact the no-bazookas. It was what he was most looking for. And so it was Jazz’s expression he did not notice until second—whites of her eyes wide, snapped to Danny, with a look that would be accusatory if worry hadn’t won that battle. Her cheeks were pale. Her hair was unbrushed.

He noticed his parents third. Compulsively, he rocked back onto his right foot, still outside the doorway, still outside the threshold of the Fenton family household.

Seeing his parents tired was of absolutely no shock-value to Danny. It was at least a twice-per-month tradition to see them haul themselves up from the basement sweaty and glaze-eyed at 7am, babbling excitement about some new ecto-spectral-hoozy-whatsits whose concept had shimmed into their minds at 8pm and now existed, fully operational, 11 nonstop hours later.

So it wasn’t the exhaustion on their face. It wasn’t the stagnant smell of sweat or the paleness of their faces or the stains on their clothes.

It was the way they looked at him. Like their whole world had fallen apart with his foot passing over the doorstep.

“Danny,” Jazz said, choked, a break in the silence. “Things are…! A little weird here. So maybe, if you wanna just get to school, I’ll finish clearing up—there’s a misunderstanding Mom and Dad have with their math. I am state finalist in Math League and have been studying college-level calculus in preparation for school applications so I’ve offered to help them fix their math, or prove to them—”

“Danny,” Maddie said, an echo of Jazz, but it felt worse. Danny scanned her hands for anything pointed enough to be a weapon. They were empty. “Danny can I just ask you something honestly, just quickly? Jazz is right. I’m just trying to clear up an issue with our math. And I won’t be mad. Whatever the answer is, I won’t be mad. I just want an honest answer.”

She stepped closer. Danny fought the urge to match her with a step backwards. Her eyes roved over him in a starved way, looking for something.

“Were you there when the portal turned on?” she asked.

“No, I wasn’t,” Danny answered. He wasn’t sure what to do with his face to make it look convincing. “It just. It needed some time to boot up, or something, right? That’s what you two said.”

“That was our guess ,but we don’t really know. The security tapes are wiped. We tried to make them EMF-resilient but a very, very strong blast of EMF could still corrupt them.”

“Yeah. I mean the portal’s gonna do that, right? When it turned on? Ripping open the Ghost Zone that’s—gotta be huge EMF.” Danny’s focus bounced between his mother’s eyes. “Just a guess. I really don’t know. I was in bed, already, whenever the portal started working.”

Left eye. Right eye. Why was she looking at him like that? Like she was sad. Was this part a trick? Make Danny let his guard down, go hey Mom need a hug? and that’s when the bazooka-whipping starts? It made his ribs feel scratchy. Stop looking at me like that.

“Have you felt anything weird at all, since the portal started working? Any gaps in your memory? Any parts of you that don’t feel right? Is there any part of you that feels like it’s changed in a way you can’t explain?”

She reached a hand out. Danny instinctively recoiled.

“Uh, yeah. They taught us about this in health class. They call it ‘puberty’ there.”

“Danny,” Jack said, and his voice was scratchy from disuse, from a long and uncharacteristic amount of time spent not speaking. “Did you die in the machine?”

A beat. A moment. Like when the zombie sends a hammer through your head.

“I’M alive!” Danny declared with a crack in his voice, with hands slammed to his chest. “Look at me. What are you talking about?”

“It’s the only math that works,” Jack continued, his words like chalk, his voice too dead. He looked too much at Danny. “If one of you two walked into the portal, and died in it. And I don’t think it was Jazz.”

This was bad. This was weird. Danny had ghost powers, sure. ‘They can’t kill me I’m already dead,’ was a funny joke sometimes. But it was funny as a joke. He was a ghost sham, really. A faker, a LARPer, whatever Tucker had called it. He was a human who was just kind of a freak now. More of a freak than he already was. He looked dead, for someone who was super-duper still alive.

He’d buried that worry, already. They weren’t allowed to bring it back.

“Look… at me!” Danny continued, mouth dry. He threw his arms wide. “Look how super alive I am! I’m awake! Using energy! Eating food and sleeping with my human body. I’ve got flesh and blood and bones and stuff! I’m not a ghost-expert but ghosts don’t have that.”

This was weird. This made Danny feel like something was scratching to get free from inside his rib cage. It twisted his entrails. Sure Tucker and Sam had thought he was dead, for those first horrible few minutes, but then he changed back to a human and the nightmare ended there. Jazz never called him dead. The ghosts called him freak and halfa and whelp, but never ‘one of them.’ That was his whole thing: being different from the ghosts who became ghosts by something so normal as dying.

He was not dead.

“If you died in the portal, your ghost wouldn’t have been ripped out of your body. It would have been allowed to stay, and then you’d be…” Jack hesitated. “I don’t know what you’d be, but you wouldn’t be alive.”

“Dad,” Jazz said, and she stood herself bodily between Danny and Jack. “What an absolutely messed up out-of-line thing to say to your son! You don’t know that! Dad you’re tired, and just because you weren’t able to solve your math problem in one night doesn’t mean you get to treat Danny like this! I said I’d help you with your math! Now apologize to Danny.”

Jazz looked over her shoulder to Danny, her expression falling at the sight of Danny’s face.

Danny backed up over the door threshold. He shook his head. “I’m not comfortable with this. This is weird. I’m gonna go to school now.”

“Danny, I promise they’re just—”

Danny turned on heel. No backpack, no change of clothes. He took to the street without a single school supply and moved, and moved.

It was supposed to be guns-blazing. Molecule by molecule. Headshot you died. He’d prepared for that this whole time, in the shower, in his dreams, in his daydreams in class. He’d duck and dodge and explain himself over and over until they understood him.

Danny wasn’t sure he was capable of explaining himself anymore.

…

Danny knocked the heavy iron knocker. He was in ghost form, as a threat. He wondered if he still smelled like yesterday’s sweat now that he wasn’t wearing yesterday’s clothes. Now he was wearing the clothes he died in.

No one answered the door. Danny phased himself in.

“Vlad!” he called, and his words echoed along the slope of the two elaborate winding staircases that twirled and met at the top like caduceus. Gold-plated banisters. A security camera buried somewhere in the ceiling, no doubt.

Danny phased into the library. His eyes roved the three stories of bookshelves wrapping the perimeter like a sheath. Gaudy. Audacious. Like Vlad would ever read that much. Danny racked his brain because some something in here was the secret to opening Vlad’s laboratory. Jazz had told him. Some gold something to be touched, and pressed down, or pushed up? Or it opened to a button. Or a keypad, maybe.

Danny spat a curse. He was being stupid. He was frazzled. He wasn’t thinking straight.

He dove into the floor below. Intangibility was the only key he needed.

The sheetrock was cold, even when he wasn’t touching it. The darkness was so piercing it made static jump in his vision, some weird trick of the brain Jazz had explained where, in the absence of all light, the brain hallucinates its own. It came with a sensation of pressure against his eyeballs, and a complete disorientation of direction, and he simply just kept going down.

Danny emerged into a wash of cold air. Cold like metal was cold. The low lights of dials and clicking machines were bright to his eyes previously dunked into the pitchest nothing. He drank it in, eyes grateful for light no matter how little, inner ear grateful for orientation that had left his head swimming and his stomach tight.

His feet tapped down to the stone ground, and the air that breezed past him was chilled.

“Vlad!” Danny called again.

Nothing.

He moved by the floor lighting, which ran in trim along the perimeter of the laboratory rooms. It lit things from beneath, made machines gaunt and specimens into sharp geometries of darkness and flesh. It made the Fenton lab feel warm in a way Danny had never considered it warm.

His feet clacked. His breath puffed.

“Vlad!”

He followed light, followed a wash of green miasma percolating from some far room and catching on the particulate of water and dust that disturbed with the air currents. Danny disturbed it too, walking through, wearing its shade of green which his shadow robbed from the wall behind him.

“Vlad. I swear to god Vlad.”

He crossed the threshold of the portal room, where the dusting of green ambience became a medallion wash of golden-green coating, painting every surface of the room. The Fenton lab was one single expansive room, portal anchored into the far wall and facing all the dead and empty air in front of it. This was different. A much smaller room, walled on all sides save for the simple doorway, and each surface reflected the color back deeper and heavier. It was like a fishtank in the wall of an aquarium lit radiant aqua-blue by all the lights within, but green instead, pure ecto-green.

Danny approached the open portal. He stared into its placid swirls, mesmerized, and scared of it, in a way he hadn’t previously felt about the portal in the Fenton basement.

“Ah, seems the cat is a good mouser after all, it dragged you in my boy.” The words came sing-song. They came spine-shivering for Danny, who felt them like hot breath on his shoulder and reeled back, pivoted, fire crackling to life in his palms.

Vlad stood at the doorway, a solid 20 steps from Danny.

“Vlad.”

“So I’ve been hearing.”

“I need you to explain the portal.”

“Ah, I see you’ve spoken to your parents.” Vlad stepped in, washed in the ecto-green which muddied his ruby red eyes. He held his hands behind his back, cape trailing, a smirk on his fanged face. “Last I heard they weren’t taking the news very well.”

“What news. What did you tell them?”

“Me? Nothing. In fact, very kindly for your sake I even tried to drive them away from the answer but… We know how stubborn your parents can be.”

“What answer?”

“That you’re dead, Daniel.”

Shock washed like ice down Danny’s spine. It sent prickles like spider legs across his skin.

“Well, I suppose there’s still chance for some doubt. It could be Jazz. She could take the fall for you, if there’s any benefit to that at all.”

“I’m a halfa. We are halfas,” Danny said.

“A silly made up word by a silly child,” Vlad mused, and the light smile left his lips. “We are dead.”

“I’m not dead,” and Danny’s words were small, and they were childish.

“You are. I am. Embrace it. It’s nicer this way.” Vlad took a few steps closer, lionously tall in his saunter, feet clacking the ground. “It’s very freeing. After you’ve died already what is there left to fear?”

“I’m alive.”

“You’re a dead body with its soul still stuffed inside it like a Christmas goose. A lot of things in your body don’t work anymore, but ghosts don’t work right anyway and it is, for all its defiance of nature, a perfectly symbiotic relationship.” Vlad’s smile brushed his lips again, warm. “It’s nice to share this with you. Isn’t it nice to share things with people?”

Danny’s heart was beating too fast in his chest, and it was a human heart, a human beat. “I’m not dead,” he declared.

“Your wounds heal quickly because the ghost piloting you only needs to remember form. It stacks cells back into place and calls it good. You’ll endure fatal injuries as you no doubt have many times in your fights, but they’re trivial because physical trauma is not what kills a ghost. It’s what creates one. You’ll necrotize in places but it’s okay, because you’ll carry on, and it will bother you only if you let it bother you, if you’re too sentimental about the puppet you’re still inside.” Vlad closed in closer, neck craning to appraise Danny. “Ghosts love a facsimile of life so you will keep your heart pumping, your lungs breathing. You’ll eat and you’ll sleep but you’ll find you won’t perish if you don’t. It just won’t be a good time if you want to keep occupying your flesh form. Take better care of it. You won’t get another.”

“You’re psychotic. And you’re wrong.”

“I have all the math to prove it.” Vlad leered from over Danny’s shoulder. He circled the boy, knocking Danny’s balance, who still on a hair trigger stood ready to fight. The light from the ghost portal painted Vlad’s face like the phases of the moon as he moved. “Did your parents explain that part to you properly?”

“No, because they didn’t get the math right.”

“Oh they’ve gotten it right. This time. It only took them two decades longer than it took me.” The portal rolled like static, and its fizzling pattern crashed like an ocean wave across Vlad’s cape. “No amount of man-made power is sufficient to drag the entire fabric of the Ghost Zone up against our own, tear a hole through it, and anchor it to a stable frame. It requires something with a pull on the Ghost Zone, a strong pull, and that thing is a human life at the moment of an extraordinarily violent death.”

Danny backed a step away from the portal, from Vlad, but the walls boxed him in. He swam in its green light.

“You stepped in and you turned the portal on, that’s what you thought, right, Daniel? Pressed a careless button on the inside and now here we are. Silly parents for not finding that button first.” Vlad’s face hardened. “No. Jack and Maddie knew about the button. Maddie explained it to me over the phone. What engineer designing and building their own portal would forget the location of the on button? They’d pressed it from the outside. It didn’t work. And so you pressing the button was not the important part. It was you dying to the electrocution that clicked everything right into place. And while your ghost should have been torn from your lifeless corpse and pulled to the Ghost Zone you instead pulled the Ghost Zone here. Your ghost got to stay put. You opened the portal. You became the undead freak you are. And now we’re here.”

Danny’s eyes bounced between Vlad’s. His cheeks felt hot, like he was enduring an accusation of wrongdoing. And he had none of the knowledge to refute what was being said.

“You’re messing with me. You’re wrong,” Danny shot back. He thrust an arm out, drenched in the fog of the portal. “If the portal needs a person to die in it then explain your portal! Are you so casual about it? You killed someone? You’re admitting to murder and you think I won’t do anything about it?”

Anger flashed like a storm across Vlad’s face. His aura swelled, pressing down with a pressure on Danny as Vlad halted and cast his shadow clear across Danny, coating the back wall. “The killing of other people with the wanton carelessness of half-baked machines is the domain of Jack and Jack alone. I’ve brought no such harm onto anyone else.”

“Then how do you have this portal?”

“This portal? This portal that I’ve had for 20 years? Which I opened when I solved the piece of Jack’s broken math that he was never able to solve until this morning?” Vlad stalked closer, hunched, imposing. Danny stepped back. “My boy Daniel you’ve had it so easy. You had it so simple. A truly clean break. So clean so lucky. A single lethal dose of electricity and it was already over. I’m jealous. You never even suffered.”

Vlad stepped closer, striking distance, arm extended. Danny flinched, but Vlad only swept his cape around, clenched in his fist, and pivoted to approach the portal.

“Put out of your misery before it even started.” Vlad slammed his fist against the portal rim, and the explosive metallic clang bounced through the rooms. His laugh belted out. “I should have been so lucky.”

19. Vlad Masters was 19. A sophomore in college. A man actively in the midst of sabotaging his social life to chase a woman who was already deeply in love with Vlad’s best friend who he hated more every day. He wasn’t sure what he ever enjoyed about Jack’s bumbling ineptitude, or his loudness, his brashness, his poor social skills, his bad breath, his mullet. Maybe Vlad had gravitated to Jack because deep down he loved how superior it made him feel to surround himself with the likes of Jack Fenton… And now, he hated how enraged it made him to watch Maddie’s eyes skip past his to focus on Jack Fucking Fenton again and again and again and again.

But surely there was hope still. Surely it was a matter of time before the rose-tinted glasses fell away and Maddie saw bumbling and inept and every such word in the basket when she looked at Jack. There’d come the day she tested the waters with Vlad to complain about one of Jack’s little quirks, and they’d find solace together in all the things Vlad was that Jack wasn’t, and all the things Vlad had that Jack didn’t. And he’d be gone, back to bumble elsewhere, and it would be just them.

The day didn’t come. It wouldn’t come. And maybe Vlad needed to change himself for Maddie. If he listened to her and Jack’s ghost ramblings, if he could put Jack in his place and solve the things Maddie couldn’t, it would show her. She’d understand.

Because that was the thing about Jack. His math was never right. Enduring Calculus 1 with Jack was all it took to prove this to Vlad. How many times he��d caught a single error on a single line for Jack, like a dropped stitch that would unravel the whole sweater. Every problem, without exception. Jack only passed on his homework grade with Vlad’s help. On his tests, he failed.

So Vlad was staring at Jack’s equation, full of bogus math, which Vlad knew was wrong because Jack had penned it, and Vlad had not yet fixed it himself.

“I’m telling you Jack, it won’t work.”

“Bogus V-man it totally will!”

It wouldn’t. But Vlad wouldn’t fix it for him. Not yet. Vlad would let Jack embarrass himself first, fully in front of Maddie, watching on, judging. Vlad would solve it for her. After. Once Jack had made a fool of himself for the hundredth time since college began.

He leaned in to study the portal frame. The gears were turning in his head already. He didn’t hear the whir of the power source catch.

…

19. Vlad Masters was 19. A tube ran down his nose and into his lungs, supplying oxygen for lungs which were failed by a diaphragm sloughing itself away. He was poisoned from the outside-in. Irradiated by ecto-energy none of the nurses or doctors could fully understand. It damaged his DNA. First obvious in the skin of his face where the blisters of his ecto-acne drained and sloughed. “Acne” was the wrong word. An unkind word. They were boils where the blast had cooked his skin, microwaved his cells. The skin on his body blackened over time. Organs decayed. Vlad Master read a lot about radiation sickness. He knew everything he had to expect.

Jack and Maddie had stopped visiting. They were dating now. It was on their last visit they’d told him, and Vlad hadn’t taken it well, and he’d perhaps burned a few bridges with the words he chose. It was deserved. Considering what Jack did to him.

He’d found the error in Jack’s math, by the way. Errors, but all the rest paled in impact compared to the lambda. The ecto-energy. The necessary ecto-potential to pull the Ghost Zone here. How stupid. How idiotic. For Vlad to die to a machine so botched in its construction.

When Vlad was released from the hospital, it was not because they’d cured him. It had been because there is a certain cruelty in making a 19-year-old live the last of his days bedded down in a white-walled room with just his books, his equations, and no one coming to visit anymore.

He was released with bedrest instructions. Vlad did not heed them. In his beater car, every cell of his body aching, he drove. At the materials lab, he disconnected his oxygen tank and moved through the lab space with the tube dangling loose from his nostril. No one was Vlad Masters’ friend. No one cared to stare long at his ugly boil-ridden face. No one stopped him as he hauled sheet metal, and supports, and bolts and wiring and resistors and power tools, checked out with a valid student ID, from the lab. The lab inventory room would not be seeing these back.

It was a prep bunker, buried beneath a vast lot of empty Wisconsin land, that Vlad hauled his materials. He and Jack had discovered it as freshmen. Poked through its bowels with flashlights and quipped and laughed over how eerie it was. Deep beneath the sheetrock, boxy rooms carved out of walls of stone. Shelf upon shelf of dusty canned foods, and shotguns sealed in cases fastened to the walls. The locks had rusted with water damage.

His arms ached until they throbbed, dragging beams of metal across the stone floor, scratching chalk-mark stains into the ground. His skin sloughed, inflamed, burning to the touch. Vlad didn’t bother to rest, because these injuries would never heal anyway. He hauled, and welded, and wired up his circuitry and resistors with a care and caution Jack would never have bothered to practice. He checked it against his math by flashlight. He took naps on the cold stone floor and woke with deep purple bruises on every part of his body that had pressed against the ground.

His appetite left him. His lungs filled with mucus. The boils on his face had spread down to his chest, his shoulders. The touch of his shirt chafed them, so he worked without one, a figure of skeletal rib ridges jutting from tight skin that bloomed with the projection of his shadow against stone walls.

He knew why Jack’s math was wrong.

A silly mistake. A stupid mistake. Anyone with half a mind for the paranormal should have realized the Ghost Zone was not so easily at your beck and call. Not without chumming the water with something it would rise to feast on.

And in that violent death, what would happen to the ghost? It would stay, wouldn’t it? If it successfully anchored the Ghost Zone to the portal it stood inside, then by definition the ghost would stay?

And was that death? Yes, in a way. But it was a death one would get to keep living. As opposed to the death Vlad was headed for, whose coldness and finality scared Vlad more than anything he could put to words.

He’d fixed the oxygen tank back to himself. He couldn’t work without it, hauling it about on a little dolly with him, back and forth, while he fetched and affixed the last of the plating he needed to craft the frame of his silent soulless portal.

He’d stolen a generator from the sports storage shed. It was meant to be enough to power the portable stadium lights they hauled onto the fields for late games, an absolute obelisk meant to cast light across an entire football field.

Surely, it contained enough power to kill one simple human.

Vlad fixed the last bolt in place. Jumper cables clamped generator to portal wiring. It was a pure skeleton. A paltry thing, like the bones of something already picked clean. Built in haste, sloppy, by a 19-year-old whose fingers were too inflamed to clutch a wrench any longer.

He could have asked Jack for help. Maddie. But he wouldn’t let them have this. They had to solve the portal on their own. They didn’t get to know his hard work. They did not get to save him.

Vlad would save himself.

A ghost anchored to a body. What was that? What monster was that?

Vlad moved. He coughed mucus from his lungs. It made it hard to breathe. So he moved slowly, and crouched, bony jutting angles, painted blotchy purple, all bruises and skin, sloughing away.

He crouched, because the portal he’d constructed was not large enough to hold him standing up. He bowed inside it, a small thing, a pathetic man of little life. He wheezed. He hurt. His eyes burned.

And he held in his hands the remote to flip the generator switch, and connect the circuit, and bring to life the math Vlad had so kindly corrected out from under Jack’s grip.

Vlad did not. Because throwing the switch would kill him.

Deep in his animal brain, his dying brain, he knew this intimately. It filled him with a drowning fear like paralysis. He did not want to die.

He would die if he did nothing.

It would be this one throwing of the switch which could save him. Which would burst the portal to life right through his heart. Electrocute it out of its rhythm, slaughter him like a pig on spot and… maybe… hopefully… drag the Ghost Zone here. And whatever he was, dead, would stay.

And whatever he was, dead, would be better than this.

Vlad held the remote in his clammy hands.

And from within the humming skeleton of his portal, his fingers caressed the on button.

…

The portal sung its happy contentment, mused in its healthy green aura, staining all the slabs of rock wall. Danny swiveled his head, recognizing now the bunker this had been before it had been a laboratory.

“I’ve harmed no one, Daniel,” Vlad concluded, his voice too measured for the horrors it had spilled forth. Too calm against the blossoming terror its words had wrought across Danny’s face. “I opened the portal to save myself. You’re lucky, Daniel. It was because of my fast thinking that your father is not a murderer. I took that honor from him.” Vlad’s head tilted to the side, suddenly sympathetic. “Although, you’ve maybe made the title whole for him.”

Vlad reached out, Danny shot away.

“Dad didn’t kill me,” he choked. “I did this to myself.”

“How lucky Jack is, to always dodge responsibility for his actions.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Of course you don’t. If you believed me, you’d have to accept you’re not wriggling out of this. There’s no denial you can bring home to your parents. If you believe me, then this is reality.” Vlad smiled, a playful glint to his fangs. “I suppose I should have more sympathy. I quite like being this way. It is so much nicer than wasting away to death, like I was. But you. You were healthy before this. This killed you, and it didn’t save you from anything.” Vlad cocked his head. “Such tragic fates, both of us, due to the carelessness of Jack Fenton.”

Danny shook his head. His heart beat—his human heart beat—all too fast in his throat. It made him sick. It made him feel like the walls were closing in around him. This was Vlad’s doing. Vlad’s trap. Vlad’s prison he’d been forced to join.

"That's not true. I'm not like you."

“Of course not,” Vlad said, sweetly. “How sweet denial is. Deny it if you like. Call me a liar. But if you ever want to come to terms with what your father did to you, consider coming to me. I understand you in a way no one else will.”

Danny gave no response. He gave no acknowledgement of Vlad’s words. He took to the air, phased himself up through the sheetrock that had been packed atop the doomsday prepper bunker. Up through the mansion, which had been built atop the portal beneath it, and not the other way around. Into the open sky, he breathed fresh air not stagnant and damp beneath the ground, bathed in light pure white from the sun and not tainted green like the bowels underneath him.

And he flew back toward the portal that made him, leaving Vlad with the portal from which he’d made himself.

...

(inspiration post from @ciestess)

#sham sacrifice #danny phantom #dp #dp fanfiction #vlad masters #danny fenton #YELLS AND THROWS THIS AT YOU #ive been spinning around like a top on this idea #tw: suicidal ideation

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long-live-astronerd-ghost-king · 1 year

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DPXDC prompt. Family? Assemble!

Reporter: Gotham News, and we have a new supervillain on the line. Mr Phantom, what are your demands at the moment? Phantom with lack of sleep and with tears: I..I want a titanium model of a spaceship! And to get a good night’s sleep and to go to the local school…and some fudge and.. Reporter: Oh, my bad. Just one question for clarification, are you by any chance an orphan or are your parents villains? Phantom: I prefer the term mad scientists Reporter: Okay. So, Gotham news! And with me on the line is the new potential child of Wayne or Batman. Want to know how two serial adopters will share a child leading a double life? Stay with us and find out. Now let's check in with Jessie for our weather report. Phantom: Wait, what?

~~~~~

Danny spends the night running from the Red Hood with a bag of fudge, Red Robin with a pot of coffee, Batman with the adoption papers and, for some reason, Brucie Wayne with an idea of internship at a space station. Ha! The Justice League will never let a ghost into orbit. Not that Wayne can blackmail superheroes or smth. Danny: Fuck you all! I’m done with vigilante activity, I’m not your competitor! What do you want from me? And I’m done with crazy billionaires too. I swear, I’d rather be adopted by a local mob boss just to piss you off! ~Later~ Danny *sees peering out of the corner Matches Malone*: Are you kidding me?! Robbie *jumps off the roof and lands right behind Danny*: Stop running, lil brother, No one’s left the family yet. Minnie: What about Neal? Robbie *shakes a knife with a bow on the handle negatively*: He’s on sabbatical, that doesn’t count. Anyway, it’s a gift for you, cub. Danny: Um, thank you, but my lab scalpels are definitely sterile, and your blade was in who knows who before you brought it here. Robbie: It’s brand-new! And Archie decorated it with a ghost on the handle. Look! It's cute! With a smile and… Dick: Hands up! You’re under arrest for trying to steal our new member! Minnie: Why is he yours, damn cop? Selina: Boys, don’t fight. He’s mine. Schrodinger’s cat is still a kitten. Killer Croc: No way, my niece is staying with me. Danny: Uncle Waylon? Long time no see. Ra's: My grandson needs steady access to ectoplasm. Danyal, come with me. Danny: Over my dead body! Oh shiii…I mean no. Anyway, don’t you think the alley’s getting a little crowded?

~~~~

Killer Croc: Is he still mad at me? RR: Danny doesn’t talk to uncles who tried to eat his beloved brother Red Robin. Killer Croc: He wasn’t even your brother then. What do you want? An apology from me? RR: That would be nice.

~~~~

Danny: I didn’t think the GIW agents would really fear the reputation of Gotham and not follow me. What a relief! Jason *quickly throws the knife into the sink*: Wow, you got lucky. Alfred: Master Jones, why don’t you eat your steak? I thought last week you were complaining to Batman that 'cause of him you got not many prey. Croc *pulls a piece of white robe from the teeth*: Well, now there is a lot of it. Bruce *gives Jason and Croc the side-eye*.

~~~~

Ra's: You do realize that Malone, Wayne and Batman are the same person, right? Boy, you were born into a family of geniuses, don’t disappoint Grandpa. Danny: Triple pocket money, triple gifts for the holidays, the opportunity to complain about the same family member three times. No, Grandpa, I definitely don’t understand. Ra's: Smart little weasel.

~~~~

Selina: Okay. Purely theoretical. Do you like to steal? Danny: I wouldn’t say that. But somehow I stole the sword from the fright knight. And also stole few jewels but then I was under the mind control. I returned them. Well, the crown and ring of the king of the ghost zone I also took without permission. Oh, and the answers to the test once. And I’m really sorry about the last one. Neal: I feel the story behind it but I prefer to know nothing about it.

#dpxdc #dcxdp #dp x dc crossover #dpxdc prompts #dpxdc prompt #dpxdc memes #dpxdc meme #rip giw

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dcxdpdabbles · 1 year

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DC x DP fic idea: Cave Boy

Danny Fenton is a lot of things, but good under pressure is not one of them. He didn't mean to be stranded in an unknown universe after playing around with his parents' Specter Speeder in the Ghost Zone and losing control of it. He didn't mean to find shelter in the strange cave systems under the city Danny crashlanded in. He didn't mean to step on any bat and bird costume-wearing toes.

All he was trying to do was fix the ship he arrived in with stolen and repurposed technology from all across the city. He also didn't take anything that wasn't in a garbage can so he couldn't even be acussed of thief.

Danny barely even allowed himself to be spotted, only going out at night to avoid regular citizens. Danny was a very considerate dimensional visitor compared to the Ghosts that came to Amity Park.

He spent hours exploring the caves as a human, but whenever he felt like it was time to go back, he shifted into his ghost form and floated upwards until he was above the ground. Sometimes he find himself far away from city limits othertimes he be right under a bank or a apparement complex.

It was an exciting, if a little rough, life. He occasionally found food in the garbage, and while it was disgusting, it was better than nothing. Thankfully, his halfa status allowed him to go longer without meals, sleep, and even breathing. It's just a bit hard to keep track of time since he rarely sees the sun, and he doesn't exactly have a clock nearby, but he sure it's been at least three months when he finds the bat and bird costume wearing people.

Danny is minding his own business, having just found a primarily intact toaster that would have the perfect wiring for the Speeder's temperature-controlling unit, when he mistakenly take a right on the third turn instead of a left.

It wouldn't usually be a problem, as he could just float to the topside and find his way to his little shelter/shop, but he had unknowingly tripped motion detectors. Danny had continued on his merry way, just starting to realize he was lost, when out of the shadows a man in a gaint bat costume leaped at him.

He yelp, barely dropping out of a nasty-looking jab, bending his back from the elbow aimed at his face and only through his ghost reflexes able to jump over the leg swipe.

"Who are you!?" The man growled "how did you find this place?"

"Dude, I live here!" Danny gasped, throwing himself to the ground to avoid what he knew was a jujitsu grab. "What you doing here?!"

He doesn't get a answering seeing as a bo staff of all things slams into the back of his head. He hits the ground just as his attacker says.

"Good job Red Robbin"

"Yummmmm" Danny mutters word association too strong not to.

When he wakes, he finds himself tucked in a medical cot inside a glass cell. He is still inside the caves but somewhere he's never seen. It's filled with technological advances that has his mouth watering just looking at them.

His hands twitch with the urge to break everything apart and tinker. He's a Fenton through and through.

He would have enjoyed the scenery- especially the gaint computer that was just calling his name- except various people in costumes were standing around his cell studying him like a animal in a zoo.

"Oh, ugh, hi," Danny says to the man in the giant red helmet. He gets no response so he tries to get a reaction from the others. It yields the same results. "Okay. So ugh is this a cult thing? Cause I really don't want to be part of whatever is happening here"

"What is your name?" The man dressed like a Bat demands and well crude if this is a cult thing Danny doesn't want them knowing his name. Either as human or as a ghost.

So he thinks of the most boring name he can think of, wrestling his ghost to make his body language as human as possible as he says "my name is Bruce"

There is a sharp intake of breath to his left, which causes Danny to look at a man wearing blue. That man has his face pressed against the glass, staring at Danny with a wide, manic smile. Even though the white lens of the blue man's mask hides his eyes, he knows they are drinking in Danny's features.

"look at him! He's adorable!" The blue man gushes and the other teenagers all nod in agreement.

"Super cute," the girl in purple agrees stepping closer to peer at Danny.

"A bit odd to see so much emotion on that face but he really is cute." the one holding a bo staff adds.

"He is weak." A boy sneers, "Hardly deserving of the blood in his veins."

"Lay off Demon Brat" The guy with the red helmet says, "He's just a civilian."

Now, Danny did not like those comments.

What if this is a cult thing but not a ghost cult like he orginally thought? What if it's a creepy sex thing? Or Cannibals? Or a secret fight club where they would force him to partake in death battles?

Whatever the case may be, they could not know he's from a different dimension.

"Bruce," the man dressed as a Bat cuts into the chatter. He levels a hard stare at Danny, who flinches away from it. The man's face softens just a bit. "We know that you from a different dimension"

"We tested your blood and have means to detect travelers from alternate universes" a guy in yellow helpfully says. "We also sort of figured who you were before that"

Seriously how?

"What?" Danny asks and the man in the Bat costume removes his masks. He's left staring at someone who look oddly familar but for the life of him he can't place it.

"Ughhhhh"

"Bruce, I'm also Bruce Wayne and in this universe I'm Batman" He says

Who?

"We will help you get home" Bruce tells Danny unlocking his cell. "I'm sorry about the ambush"

Now, this is where Danny should come clean and tell this man the truth, but he panics because he is not good under pressure and instead says, "Okay,"

And that's how Danny is mistaken for Bruce Wayne's civilian dimension traveling counterpart. He tries to roll with it, he does, but it's a little hard to when he's surrounded by weirdos who dress up like clowns to fight crime.

What even is his life.

#dcxdpdabbles #dc x dp crossover #Cave Boy #Danny is flying by the seat of his pants #the Bats are losing thier minds over “civilian teenage Bruce”

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lovifie · 6 months

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Back to Masterlist

Hi, this a post about callsigns characters could have because I love "cool" sounding nicknames with the most stupid backstory:

Rat: Because when you first entered the team you were so shy that when you weren't on a mission they could only see you scurrying out of a room whenever they entered like a little mouse. Plus, Gaz keeps saying you look like the rat from the Wallace and Gromit movie when eating breakfast.

Knockout/Knock: Because Soap and you were playing around, he was following you and you were running so fast you didn't notice the door was locked and you ran into it so hard you knocked yourself out.

Icarus: You made fun of Ghost for being British and about how they always burn when they tan only for you to go and get such an aggressive sunburn you were required to take medical leave for two weeks.

Pudding: After a mission you were craving it so bad that you didn't care that the only one left was way past its recommended date for eating. And after reassuring them that you would be fine you ended up throwing up so hard late at night that you woke up everybody.

Mole: Because when you are not wearing your glasses you are so blind they wonder how did you even made it into the military. Many people think you are just a spy that the task force kept as a pet.

Pierrot: Which is a sad clown, often pining for the love of Columbine, who usually breaks his heart and leaves him for Harlequin. And since that's basically a compilation of your love life that became your name, a sad clown but in Italian.

Anakin: You tried to download one of the Star Wars movies from a not-so-trustworthy website, you ended up downloading such a massive amount of viruses that you were almost the reason for the downfall of the whole military because of how aggressive the hack attack was. You now have parental control on everything that has internet access.

Navi: As in the fairy that travels with Link on the Legend of Zelda. Because every time that you would try to de-escalate an argument you would start like: "Hey, listen, we are all tired." "Hey, listen, let's all take a breath." "Hey, listen, we are all adults."

Gecko: Because while sleeping on deployment a gecko fell on your face from the ceiling, and you became so terrified of them that you barely slept for months after that.

Baby: Do you know when you accidentally call your teacher "mom"? Well, it happened to you, but you called Price "dad" and he didn't skip a beat before answering "Yes, babygirl?"

I could go on and on with these, I hope you find it at least half as funny as I do. Feel free to use them however you want and to add to the list as well, please I'll love to read them. 🩷🩷

Also, I would definitely be Mole, my blind ass would shoot and wish for the best. Which one would you guys be?? Also, Knockout and Icarus are my favourite ones and the reason I made the post hehe

Also, the rat I mentioned:

Back to Masterlist

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unreliablesnake · 10 months

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Not on my watch (Ghost x reader)

Summary: Soap finds out Ghost is dating his little sister.

Warning: mention of miscarriage, age gap

“No,” Soap said sternly as his eyes moved from the lieutenant to you. “Don't even think about it.”

“Johnny, I–”

“No, LT, there's nothing you can say that would change my mind. She's my little sister! I've been sheltering her from assholes and people like us from the beginning.”

Ghost let out a groan as he buried his hand into his hair and grabbed a fistful of it. “Come on, she's an adult. She can decide who she wants to date,” he tried.

“Have you stopped to consider how much younger she is? Hmm?” Soap began as he poked his superior’s chest. “Because I can assure you our parents would be against it too. Imagine the scandal if they or anyone we know found out.”

And while Ghost was losing hope of having a proper conversation with the Scotsman, you seemed pretty confident that you could win this debate. “They love me, they wouldn’t object. They only have issues with your girlfriends because they’re usually–”

“You'd better not finish that sentence, lassie,” Soap warned her with a raised finger.

“Just saying,” you told him with your hands held up.

“Can't we discuss this like adults? Please, just try to consider supporting us. I love her, we've been through hell already, I won't break her heart,” Ghost tried, feeling a sudden wave of guilt pass through him when he felt you tightly wrap your fingers around his hand.

Soap didn't miss any words, he immediately picked up on a hint. “What does that supposed to mean? What hell have you been through?” he asked.

Before Ghost could answer, you put a hand on his chest to stop him. “Don't,” was all you said.

But Soap was like a dog that didn't wanna let go of the bone he got. “I'm gonna ask again. What are you talking about?”

“She was pregnant,” Ghost suddenly announced, causing you to let go of his hand and begin to pace the room. He knew he shouldn't have said that, but he had enough of games. “We wanted to keep it, but she had a miscarriage.”

The sergeant suddenly understood everything that had happened in the past months. “Is that why you were so mad at everyone for a while?” he asked you, earning a cautious nod in response. “Fuck me.” He ran a hand through his mohawk as he took a few steps back. “Mom and Dad can't find out. Ever. And if anyone asks–”

“I don't need you to control my life, Johnny! I'm not a kid anymore,” you reminded him. “Just accept we're together and don't sabotage our relationship. That's all I'm asking for.”

Instead of speaking up, Soap walked over to you and pulled you into a hug. He knew you were right, it was probably time for him to treat you like an adult. And as for Ghost, he would be a hypocrite if he said he had never laid his eyes on younger women before. Because he did, and he also knew how persuasive you could be if you wanted something.

“If you end up breaking her heart anyway, I might shoot you on the field by accident,” he warned the lieutenant over your shoulder.

#call of duty #modern warfare #mw2 #simon ghost riley #simon riley #ghost #simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #ghost x reader #mw3 #john soap mactavish #john mactavish #soap

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nerdofspades · 1 year

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Bruce looked at the pop-up on the Batcomputer's screen.

"Explain," he growled, glancing down at Tim.

"Not much to explain," Tim answered, pulling up lines of code. "It showed up ten seconds ago."

"I'm starting a full diagnostic," Barbara said, voice filtering through the speakers. "So far, I'm not seeing anything."

"And yet..." Time trailed off glancing at the window again. It had a video queued up to play and the words "IMPORTANT: PLEASE WATCH. DO NOT DELETE" in large text at the top.

"There's a new folder labeled 'a gift for Batman,'" Tim said. "Not something any of us made."

"Clearly."

"I'm still not finding any viruses, corrupted files, or spyware," Oracle said. "The new folder was programmed to stay in a hidden partition for a few days after it was placed. Then, obviously, the pop-up to catch our attention."

"Folder also has a text file named 'security notes,'" Tim said. "Maybe our new hacker is friendly?"

"It's starting to look like it," Oracle agreed. "The video is clean. It should be safe to watch."

Bruce sighed. "Then let's see what they've got for us."

The video opened with a dark room. The background hidden in shadows, while the foreground was well lit, letting them clearly see the tired teen in the center of the frame as he took a heavy swig from his mug before putting it down.

"Pulling up facial recognition."

He ran a hand through his messy black hair and then down his face, pinching his nose and hiding the bags under his blues eyes for a moment before he dropped his hand and finally looked at the camera.

"I really don't want to do this," he said, "but you need it." He glanced longingly off screen in the direction of the mug he'd put down.

"First of all, I think I should apologize for hacking you. Or asking my friend to, technically. I just. You need to know about this and I didn't know of another way to get it to you that would be secure.

"I did at least make him promise to make a record of how he got in so you can patch that.

"That out of the way... to business? I'm Danny Fenton, for the last year or so I have also been the hero Phantom in Amity Park. My parents are Jack and Maddie Fenton. They are ectobiologists and ghost hunters. While extremely biased and not actually that good at catching ghosts, their tech is easily the best in the business."

"That's a positive match."

"Running a search on Phantom."

"I- fucking shit." Danny put his head in his hands again, running them back through his hair before leaning back, almost collapsing into the chair.

"This kid has... gotten into some shit."

"Everyone knows you're the League's strategist, Batman. And. I'm strong enough. I can handle my problems, that's not what I'm worried about.

"It's been about a year and I've already been mind controlled once." Danny laughed. A dry, broken, almost desperate laugh. "And that was just some lowlife that wanted to rob jewelry stores. I'm still not worried about. It's not why I'm sending you this. The magic relic he used is broken and gone now."

"Well that explains one of his problems."

"The others?"

"An attempted kidnapping and fairly standard property damage. I want to see some footage of those fights before passing judgement."

"Even more standard given he doesn't seem to have a mentor. Batman, he was fourteen."

"No. I. I've seen a version of the future. One where I go mad. Where I snap. And the Justice League can't stop me.

"I don't know if I- he kills everyone. I don't know who, if anyone, makes it out. But it's not anyone that could really do much. I... I saw ten years after he- I snapped. Earth was little more than rubble and ash. Only one city was left holding out and it was about to fall- was falling when I got there.

"I've managed to change the time line. What broke him didn't happen here. But. I can't guarantee nothing ever could.

"So. Yeah. Next best thing is making sure you're prepared. All my powers. All my weaknesses. Everything I know of that could possibly hurt me. Schematics and blue prints for anything you could need to fight me, track me, keep me out, keep me contained. All nice and giftwrapped for your convenience.

"Uh... that's everything. Why is it always so awkward to end a video? Hopefully we never see each other? I guess? Pretty sure us actually meeting is gonna be a bad sign.

"You know what. I'm gonna turn this thing off now before I say something stupid."

"Batman, who's 'Phantom'?" Superman asked, glancing up from the Watchtower computer he was working at. "Aren't we supposed to vote on new members?"

Batman grunted. "He's not a member, just someone who understands the need for contingencies."

"You know what, I'm not gonna even ask."

"Probably for the best."

#dp x dc #bruce wayne #batman #danny phantom #dc #batman's contingincies #tim drake #barbara gordon

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drawnfamiliarfaces · 6 months

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Would Jenny allow Danny to tinker with her? I know robotics isn’t exactly the same as aerospace engineering (and I do be headcanoning that my boy chose this as his major since he wants to be an astronaut), but with all the experience he had from handling his parents inventions I believe he can be trusted with fixing something as complex as a robot. I like to think that Danny was really impressed with how Jenny was made and secretly wanted to take a look at how she works, but was too shy to ask because he knows how it’s like to be treated like an object and not a person (with the whole “ghosts are non-sentient globs of ectoplasm with post-human consciousness” spiel he heard so many times) and didn’t want to make Jenny uncomfortable. I believe it took Jenny some time and getting to know Danny and his engineering skills before she let him fix her when she got something badly broken. It was like a show of ultimate trust from Jenny’s side and Danny was flattered, humbled and very respectful. And super careful of course, constantly asking how Jenny’s doing or feeling while he tinkered, mindful of her. I bet she was touched.

Not gonna lie, this is one of the more fascinating asks I got - if only because its incredibly interesting to read about your take/interpretation of Danny & Jenny's relationship! I hope you don't mind me saying, but it feels like you adore both characters and it's very cute!

Well, now, in HoM AU, both Danny and Jenny are close friends and indeed Danny is one of the few people who Jenny trusts with - well, herself - her mechanical self. Like you, I headcanon Danny as quite mechanicaly gifted - in HoM AU he actually graduated college/uni with engineering degree, so he got education to polish his raw skills! He is one of the first people who would help Jenny in and out of the field, if there is a minor malfunction or an injury of some sort!

But even for that to happen it took a couple of years and a few adventures together.

So to answer the original question, I would have to say that in HoM AU specifically, neither Danny would ask to 'tinker' with her, nor Jenny would probably be totally comfortable with that question if asked. 'Tinkering' would imply a degree of casual poking around, and in this case, both Danny and Jenny have certain life experiences that gave them... boundaries when it comes to their own and others' autonomy. Jenny especially.

(a bit of random background info dump here to explain the reasoning, but feel free to ignore it, since i basically answered the ask xD i just got bitten by a writing bunny, so its gotten a bit long - be warned!)

When Jenny was younger and only just acclimatizing herself with human world and amongst teenagers, she was rather blaze at times with how much access to her body she gave to her human friends and acquaintances.

After all, her mother was rather frank about it - often poking around in Jenny's mechanics and code. But it was her mother, who created her (sort of 'why are you covering yourself, i made you i already know what you have' mother attitude, which is a bit over-controlling and invasive to other's autonomy, but well, Jenny is a robot after all) and it a completely different deal from others.

So, despite her mother's warnings there are instances when Jenny was not very careful. Like when she allowed Brad, Tuck and Sheldon to literally remove and rip out her stuff in pursuit of fashion goals. Or when she dropped her guard around Todd Sweeney and got reprogrammed for her good deed.

And during the events of the last episode, she was once again controlled, by Dr Locus. While not exactly her fault, it still left a lasting impression that any mechanically gifted person could be dangerous to her.

Now, this is where we venture into my personal headcanons for MLAATR that are tied into HoM-verse:

Another aspect of Jenny's developed caution to giving access to her body - is the fact that she is not considered as a real person in the eye of the government/world. She is a thing, a weapon created by Dr. Walkman. She does not have the same rights as a human, and on paper she does not even have rights to her own body. It's all patented Nora Wakeman technology, (secretly) founded by the government.

And she has been fighting it ever since she was a teenager and refused to be called an IT - XJ-9 - and became a HER, a teenage girl Jenny, who also just happens to be a robot.

At first it started as a simple teenage rebellion and she went to school and started to hang out with other kids, but what about later after she graduates? Will she be even allowed to? Sure, maybe her school will give her a diploma, but how legal will it be to give something like that to someone who is legally not a real person? After all, its not like when other kids will turn 18 and can be their own people, not under the legal control of their parents. Jenny is her mother's property, intellectual and physical. For her to be considered a real person in the eye of government, it would require a law being passed about recognizing sentience of Artificial Intelligence.

And sure, she could probably be made an exception, being a hero robot and all, but the problem is, she is not the only human-made robot in existence! What about her sisters, who are prototypes and are not as developed as her? Her brother, who seemed to develop sentiency to the point of turning on humans?? Melody and Killgore?? And its not only in her world (cartoon), but in others (since its a crossover). So the question about AI/Robot sentience, no matter if they are good or bad or how developed they are, would not concern only her, it would be a global debate.

And we all know how the governments of the world would feel about passing laws about sentience of artificial beings that were created to serve the human race. It would be a struggle one way or another.

So, as she grows up and sees the world refusing to aknowledge her as a person, she doesnt have legal rights to finish school and go to college, to get a job, to get married, heck she cant even have a legal documentation that doesnt says 'Dr. Wakeman's creation'. The government says: your body belongs to us, because we paid for Dr. Wakeman to make you - you belong to us, we control you.

That, on top of several unpleasant experiences with other people disregarding her autonomy, will equal to Jenny trying to get some sense of that control back. So she starts to be more cautious about how much access others have to her physical self; she starts to build and reinforce boundaries with other people, starting with her family and friends.

It was one of the darkest days in Sheldon's life, when Jenny started to firmly say 'no' to whenever he asked her about her inner workings and casual access for poking around. xD Tuck was not a happy camper either, that his favorite robot friend became very stingy with all the cool stuff. But Brad got it. And after gentle (and sometimes not) reminders, others became more understanding.

It was a little harder with her mother. Dr. Wakeman truly loved her daughter, but she was a scientist first and mother second. She was so used to casual access to Jenny, in order to keep maitanance that it was hard for her to break the habits. Its still a constant struggle, but she has gotten so much better.

Now, when it came to her new friends amongst HoMies, she already has built a set of boundaries that allowed her to feel more secure as a person, despite how the world sees her, but she is much more reserved to opening herself up to others, at least compared to how she first approached people when she was younger.

It took a few missions and getting to know them better, for her to start trusting with them with her mechanical self. But now a few years later, she feels comfortable enough with most of them to give her a helping hand when needed!

Of course not everyone are capable of helping her though: Danny, Kim and Zak are three of more mechanically oriented people who can help. Though Danny is the one with actual education in that field, while Kim and Zak learned more by necessity, from Kim's various jobs and Zak to operate the Saturday's equipments.

When Rex joined them, he actually became the second best person for her to come to if she needed help. Not only because he has unprecedent skills in mechanics, but also because of his nanites. (but thats info dump for another time, lol)

Jun has some basic knowledge in mechanics, but nowhere near enough for her to feel comfortable poking in Jenny's insides. Jake is perhaps the least capable of helping, when it comes to engineering, followed by newbie Randy (tho we really aint counting him tbh xD).

Ben is a complicated situation - he has some training and knowledge in engineering and robotics because of his Plumber training, but Jenny has heard horror tales from Gwen about how he treats his stuff (the whole hacking/playing with Omnitrix settings), so she flat out refuses for Ben to touch her. However in emergency/battle situation she would allow Ben to use one of his aliens to do so (like, Grey Matter or Upgrade).

So, we talked about Jenny's experiences and why they would contribute to her feeling uncomfortable if someone asked to 'tinker' with her.

Now, let's talk about why Danny would not ask to 'tinker' with her in the first place.

Like you said, Danny is all to familiar with the struggle of being part of something tat is hardly recognized as a sentient species - he had to listen to his parents dismiss ghost sentience most of his younger life. Of course, they have gotten much better since the... 'finale' of DP, but this sort of racism? xenophobia? (im not rally sure which term to use tbh) prejudice against ghosts would have left a lasting impression on Danny.

So I dont remember if I ever implied it, but in HoM AU - events of DP finale happened very differently and the resulting consequences of it diverged a lot from Mr ButtHurtman's 'canon'.

(Also, I had ideas about it, before a Glitch In Time came out, so events from there were not taken into consideration. )

I don't want to reveal much, because it is kinda one of my planned flashback for HoM, but the events that happened reinforced Danny's ... well lets say regard of people's autonomy? It's kind of hard to put into words.

Ok, let's explain it like this: Danny would not ask Jenny if he could look at how she worked and if he could tinker with her, because it would be like if his Mom and Dad casually asked if they could perform a vivisection on him to see how different he is from a full human.

And while sure, the comparison might sound a bit extreme, since there is a difference when it comes to robots and humans about 'poking around' in their innards. But to Danny - it would be too close of a comparison - because of the whole 'recognition of sentience' thing.

After all, wasn't it just some years ago, his parents cried that ghost are nothing more than lump of malicious energy that have no feelings? They changed their mind after Danny's reveal, which allowed them to actually listen and look into evidence proving otherwise and learn. And here is Jenny, struggling to be recognized as a person, since she is considered nothing more than a lump of metal with no feelings - just a weapon to be pointed in a certain direction.

And Danny would feel like asking Jenny if he could casually poke inside her, is a bit... hypocritical? And not to mention insenstitive. After all, he knows how she feels - she is basically still living his worst imagined life in some ways.

So, I don't think he will ever ask to study how she works by casually poking inside her.

HOWEVER -

At some point, after they became friends, Danny would feel like he should know at least some basics on how Jenny works, just so he could help her in an emergency.

I imagine it happened after a particularly rough mission, and Danny had to help Jenny back home since she was unable to do so herself, so Dr. Wakeman could fix her. After some time thinking, he would sit in front of both Nora and Jenny and ask them for permission if he could learn how Jenny works - from Nora.

After all, Danny does not need to poke inside Jenny to learn how she functions, when there is her mother right there - the creator, the maintanance and doctor all in one package, with access to blueprints and all intricate knowledge, who can evaluate what Danny needs to know in accordance to his passable engineering skills. She could teach him the basics - but of course not without Jenny's permission.

So he asks her, if he could learn, because he is tired of looking how she gets hurt along with them, but unlike most of them she can not be easily fixed with bandages and some time. And Danny, since he is one of the few of them who has the skills, would like to be actually able to help her with those skills. But it is her body - it is her choice, to trust him or not.

And Jenny would be speechless. It would be the first time someone asked her like that. Not even Kim, who is one of her closest friends, asked before (but mostly because Kim was perfectly aware that she is nowhere skilled enough to even think about it).

And you would be right. It would be a show of ultimate trust from Jenny, to agree for Danny to learn. And maybe at some point, simply learning, turned into more on hands learning in some small ways. And Jenny's trust was never betrayed, and Danny always stayed humbled and aware of that.

so, i hope the answer was satisfying, or at least entertaining for you! thank you again, your ask was delightful to read and allowed me to explore some of my own backstory parts for HoM a little bit more!

#que?#hom au #hom au q&a #danny fenton #jenny xj9 #long post #i do apologize for length. im not even sure how coherent my ramblings are but i do hope it was fun to read at least lol

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wandixx · 1 year

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I just realized that there is literally zero fanfics with Danny Fenton/M'gann M'orzz pairing and idk, am I the only one who see nearly endless potential in it?

I don't know how they met but they're probably pretty fast friends.

With Danny being space nerd, he would ask M'gann all the questions about Mars. At the same time, from what little I know about Miss Martian, she is "Earth nerd" and would ask him all the questions about Earth and what normal teenage life is like, because YL team is not the best study case. Like, only Wally and maybe Artemis (I don't know a thing about her other than 'snarky/blunt archer') had normal human life. He is happy to answer, introducing her to his semi normal life before accident.

They exchanged stories about stars from their respective homes.

Just imagine, Danny binge watching "Hello Megan" just to know what she is talking about and it's not his thing, really, but he learnt to enjoy it because he associated it with M'gann (we can have Jazz being fan too and feeling 'betrayed' because she tried to strongarm her brother to watch it for years and all it took was to cute alien girl to mention it and he is pulling all nighters).

Just imagine, M'gann asking one of her teammates (probably Robin) to teach her to play Doomed, so she can play with her halfa friend and his friends and not ask about every controller. They don't really mind her being newbie but sudden progress doesn't go unnoticed or unpraised.

Everlasting trio inviting her to Nasty Burger every once in a while to talk about random, not hero related things.

Rest of the YJ may not even know about Phantom. They just know about this Danny, M'gann's totally civilian friend, who likes milkshakes and video games.

They share their stories and tips about heroing and powers they have similar. Mostly M'gann shares things she learnt from her uncle or in Mountain because let's be honest, self taught is rarely better than someone with proper mentoring. She for sure helps with ghosts if they attack during her visit, even if Danny tries to shield her from it. "I'm supposed to be your civilian friend, am I not?"

She definitely does what she can to help with his hero PR. She may or may not accidentally convinced rest of the Team she has celebrity crush on underappreciated ghost hero from the middle of the nowhere. They help her, spamming all negative news reports with praises for Phantom from both hero and civilian accounts. It caused some mess, Justice League had questions but Danny was happy so it doesn't matter.

If we go with ghost being super emphatic we can have Danny overwhelmed by everyone's feelings (honest hate his parents have towards his hero persona, confliction of towns people, concern of his friends, excitement of Casper students idk, EVERYTHING) and M'gann helps him overcome it. Later both of them being there for eachother when everything was just too much. Y'know just this mutual understanding that nobody else can really give them.

Maybe some communication troubles because M'gann prefers telepathy and Danny does not like it in a slightest (Freakshow flashbacks or something) but tries to accommodate. Or M'gann doesn't even try because idk, one of telepathy rules is "don't read thoughts of dying person unless they project it to you" and she feels it goes for dead (even if only halfway) too.

They're just vibing with eachother.

Then there is ghost attack outside Amity and Team is send to deal with it. M'gann is surprisingly competent at dealing with everything ghost does while evacuating civilians while someone magic competent is called. Suddenly she stops, gets her phone and makes a call:

"Hey Danny, do you have a moment?" whole team is too shocked to react, because in the love of whatever they believe in, why is Megan calling her civilian friend in the middle of the battle with unknown entity. "It's [insert whatever ghost you want] wrecking havoc. Can you come by at take them to the zone? I don't have thermos on me right now. Thank you."

WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?

Que Danny flying top speed to wherever she is, fights a ghost and contains them. Que someone (maybe Wally) being like:

"When did you wanted to tell us that your civilian friend is a hero?"

M'gann honest to god forgot that Team thought Danny was a civilian.

"I worked quite hard to drag her into as little of my Phantom bullshit as I could. I am proud of being a civilian friend, thank you very much"

They all came in contact together after that.

Martian Manhunter tried to give Fenton a shovel talk but boy was too excited to meet his favourite hero and to focused on not making fool of himself to be actually scared or something. He deals with Skulker on a regular basis anyway, there are very few threats that could actually scare him.

Team members also tried to shovel talk him, just in case. They all failed for one reason or another

Or maybe Danny is already YJ member. Everything above can still happen just without ghost attack. Danny can have issues with Zeta Tubes though. That's a good stuff.

There can be a drama of "I'm your friend only because I'm alien/semi normal, am I not?"

Or we can go with space obsessed Danny going full Vlad on cute alien girl. Y'know, because "that's a halfa thing to do". M'gann is not into that. I'm not really excited about this take but that's a possibility too.

Use it as you will. Just please someone write it

#dp x dc #dpxdc #dcxdp #dc x dp #no other fandom tags to not iritate people in either fandom who aren't into dp x dc stuff #just let them vibe #danny fenton/m'gann m'orzz #they could be so cute together #danny's reveal to yj could be something like:#M'gann: shapeshifts into her civilian disguise #Danny: oh I can do that too #and then shifts into his human form #que everyone is shocked #everyone other than m'gann #she knew #Wally: Why are ghosts Martians on steroids?#i definitely don't have around 1000 if no more words of Danny comforting M'gann after she saw civilian die in car crash she couldn't prevent #he found a ghost and dragged them and all that jazz just give his friend a closure #but he was really sus about it so uncle J'onn does not approve #“M'gann what are martian funeral traditions?”#that's the question that started this whole mess #I know nearly nothing about dc martians so it probably doesn't make to much sense canon wise #that's the reason why i won't post it #probably #maybe I'll get myself to do research and edit what I have to fit #who knows #do i tag correctly?#idk how to tag

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ludinusdaleth · 4 months

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bouncing off of this wonderful post mentioning how zathuda expects to be the main character because he would be in many current stories, as well as my own thoughts about fearne & her family ive had for a while: i think it is interesting how fearne is representative of the different ways folk portray fae in modern media.

first off, id like to note how many fae in cr feel like they are an homage to fae stories embedded in our cultural consciousness. for example, artagan was most definitely based off of jareth in labyrinth, and his moniker of the traveler may be an homage to the fable of the satyr & the traveller. so, what is fearne?

one of the first 4-sided dives featured ashley & matt discussing how they based fearne's story off of a guillermo del toro flick - and this definitely clicked to me. morrigan, ira, & all her bizarre animal friends at morri's mansion would fit so easily into a del toro film you wouldn't even blink at them. in del toro's work (namely pan's labyrinth & hellboy 2: the golden army) faeries are fundamentally strange, offputting, & wonderfully weird. they are goblins with wagons as legs, and trolls with talking tumors, and terrifyingly skinny entities with eyes in their hands that eat children. you can practically see doug jones in an intricate suit & makeup to play ira like he did the pale man or the faun (i swear matt's hand usage as ira is an homage to jones's iconic hands in costume), see the puppet of morrigan that weighs over a ton controlled by five folk at once. del toro's work as well as matt & ashley's plays into a fae that is more complicated than a human imagines at face value, something you must work to imagine & understand (& create). something playful, integrally bound to oaths, ancient, mischievous. it is happy & natural to be gross & incomprehensible and that is part of what makes these films (as well as other bizarre puppeteered dreamscapes like the dark crystal, labyrinth) almost comforting even when sad. pan's labyrinth also features a young girl as a protagonist, ofelia, who sees these creatures as respite & destiny, who is a fae princess amidst mortal war. fearne couldn't be more ofelia if she tried. (side note - god does the scene of the pale man eating the pixies in front of ofelia feel like fearne learning what lud does to her people. someone even made a meme of it.)

on the other hand, zathuda & birdie's story is obviously based on a fae romance novel that populates shelves today - sarah j maas's or holly black's work comes to mind. zathuda is (or was - he seems a ghost of it) clearly a looker, a fierce & sexy hunter, a handsome & strong unseelie royal who somehow takes in & courts a random nobody girl, birdie. but cr notably frames the love story narrative as a classist manipulation, that leaves birdie running for the rest of her life, falling for a weirdo nobody like her over zathuda, and leaves fearne without parents that would show her this incredibly popular kind of romance as an answer. she cannot fall back on a family of kisses drawing blood, of hunter & hunted as a beautiful meet-cute, of a throne & power. she can only fall back on the strange, the grotesque, the raw. they are ugly compared to a promise of a masquerade ball or leading a wild hunt, what folk expect of fae in a barnes & noble book haul - but they promise a safety in the outcast. because a guillermo del toro film will always fundamentally be about the human condition. "monsters are the patron saints of our blissful imperfections." every monster in his stories is a person as much as you or me is.

fearne was born of a fae romance novel but raised in a puppeteer-and-vfx fairytale film. she holds not only exandria's fate in her hands, but the feywild's, too. fae see themselves as higher beings while squabbling in courts as much as mortals do. they refuse to accept their chaos and try to maintain order & royalty with courts and bloodlines against each other. try to keep fae out of exandria because they cant know they are alike to their mortal counterparts. they cant be wild like a party of puppets at the end of labyrinth dancing with the human girl sarah. they wish to be as mysterious as if they lived in a ya dystopia. and it is clearly leaving them worse. fearne is the literal unity of all the ways fae are potrayed in a modern landscape. what will that mean for her and her home in the end?

#long post #critical role #critical role meta #fearne calloway #athion zathuda #birdie calloway #morrigan calloway #ira wendagoth #matthew mercer #ashley johnson #guillermo del toro #fae #campaign 3 #pan's labyrinth

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wolfjackle-creates · 11 months

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Bring Me Home Arc 2 Part 17

Damn, how did this get to a part 17????

Here's the promised WIP Wednesday (on a Thursday)!

I had a lot of fun writing this part. The words just flowed so easily.

If you didn't notice, I now have the first arc posted on AO3. It covers the first three parts I've shared here along with some extras that I never did.

Story Summary: Tim and Danny are both neglected by parents who care more about their work than their families. They deal with this by spending too much time online and find each other playing MMORPGs. They keep up their friendship as Tim becomes Robin and Danny becomes Phantom and don't bother keeping secrets from each other.

Part 1, Previous

Word Count: 1.9k

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By the time morning had rolled around, Tim had also signed them up for a 7:30 AM and a 6 PM TV interview. Hopefully they could do enough damage control to mitigate the worst of Walker’s bad PR, whatever that turned out to be.

Tim nudged everyone awake at 5 AM. Conner and Cassie got up the easiest.

“Morning, Rob,” Conner said through a yawn. “Time to prepare for our interview?”

“Yep. We’ll be going in uniform since this is an interview for the Young Justice.”

“Great,” said Cassie. “We’ll be ready.”

Tim went to Danny next. “Hey, Danny.” The boy didn’t move, so Tim shook his shoulder slightly.

“Wha…?” Danny blinked his eyes open. “Wha’s goin on?”

“Me and the others are going to our interviews. We’ll be back in a few hours, kay?”

Danny just blinked at him and Tim laughed fondly.

“I’ll leave a note.”

Tim skipped breakfast on their way out, though Bart offered him some breakfast bars.

“It’s too late to be up,” Tim yawned.

Conner laughed as he hugged Tim and wrapped him in his TTK. They rose several feet into the air. “You should not have pulled that all-nighter.”

“How else was I supposed to be awake in time?”

Tim could feel the way Conner shook his head. “Just tell me where to go. I’ll get us there.”

Tim pointed to an area in town. “It’s over that way.”

Bart grinned. “I’ll meet you three there!”

“We won’t be long,” said Cassie.

With the benefit of flying, they were at the radio station within fifteen minutes. Sometimes being friends with metas made life so much easier.

As soon as they entered, a team of people greeted them.

“You were actually serious!” exclaimed a tall, white man. “Thought for sure it was a joke when I got your email last night. I’m Steve and I’ll be your interviewer this morning.”

Tim shook his hand. “Good morning, Steve. Robin at your service, and these are Superboy, Wonder Girl, and Impulse.”

Then they had to be introduced to all the producers, sound engineers, and assistants. If it hadn’t been for his parents’ gala training, Tim was certain he would’ve forgotten all the names instantly.

The employees knew how to do their jobs, however, and despite everyone wanting to meet the heroes, in less than twenty minutes, they were set up in the recording studio.

“So,” said Steve. “I just want to make sure I get this right. You, Robin, have been friends with Phantom for a while now and wanted to tell our listeners the truth about him. That he’s actually a hero and not a menace.”

“That’s right, Steve. I knew him before… Well, he’s a ghost. You know what before implies. He was there for me when I first became Robin. Now I want to be there for him when he’s dealing with similar struggles.”

“That’s not what any of the experts believe.”

Conner snorted. “The so-called experts in this town want to completely destroy any and all ghosts. Don’t think they’re unbiased.”

Bart nodded. “Yeah. We may not have known Phantom as long as Robin, here. But he’s a good guy. Helped us out when we got stranded here.”

“Stranded, eh? Mind if I ask you more about that on air?”

Tim laughed. “You can ask whatever you like. But I can’t guarantee we’ll answer everything. Secret missions and all that, you understand.”

Steve sighed theatrically. “It was worth a shot. Now, we’ll be going live in about five minutes and we’ll have three segments of eight minutes separated by two minute ad breaks. For a total of thirty minutes in the studio. Anything in particular you want me to ask?”

Tim pulled a sheet of paper out of his utility belt. “I wrote some down, if you don’t mind. They should be engaging and broad enough to please your audience and personal curiosity.”

“I won’t ask only from this list, you understand,” said Steve as he took it.

“Of course not. The first three are ones I do request that you ask, however. Beyond those, they’re just suggestions.”

Steve skimmed the list and nodded. “I can work with this.”

Beyond the window, the sound technician made a signal.

“All right, everyone. That’s the one minute mark. Let me introduce you before you say anything, capiche?”

Tim gave a thumbs up and the others added their assent.

The “on air” light turned on and Steve spoke in a voice much more performative than the one he’d been using. “Good Morning, Amity Park! This is Steve Boyce here to help you bring in the day. How are you early birds doing? Have I got a treat for you today! So last night I got absolutely no sleep because at nine thirty, shortly after our newly implemented curfew, I got a surprise email. From no other than the heroes who helped us out the other night when we were attacked! That’s right! The one and only Robin from Gotham emailed my and asked to come on my small, local show. So he and the Teen Titans are here with me. Let’s give them a warm Amity welcome, what do you say?”

Cassie laughed. “Thanks for that introduction, Steve. I’m Wonder Girl and I’d like to clarify one point. The former Teen Titans have kept the name Titans even if they’re no longer Teens. So we’ve decided to go by a new name.”

Bart nodded. “Yep. We’re the Young Justice now.”

Steve laughed. “Looks like I’ve already put my foot in it. Let me correct myself, let’s give the Young Justice a warm Amity welcome.”

Tim put on the happy gala voice his parents had drilled into him. “Not at all! It’s a new change and we’ve never really operated out here before. Even back home in San Francisco or Gotham we get called the Teen Titans more often than not. We’re just on a crusade to get the name change to stick.”

“Well I’m sure all of my listeners will be sure to get it right going forward. Now, let’s get down to business. We’re all thrilled that you were around to help us out the other night, but what brought you to Amity to begin with? Mayor Montez has publicly stated he never even had a chance to reach out for help before you were on the scene.”

“That was all Robin’s doing,” said Conner. “He’s friends with Phantom, you know.”

“Yep,” agreed Tim. “We were in the area when our transport broke down. Impulse figured out where we were and I knew of Amity due to my friendship with Phantom. Since we weren’t on a time limit, we decided to pop into town for a visit. Imagine our surprise when our very first evening here, we experienced a ghost invasion!”

Cassie laughed. “Oh, come on, Rob. With our lives, it really wasn’t that surprising.”

“Yeah,” said Bart. “We’ve totally had weirder things happen to us.”

Steve leaned forward and pitched his tone lower as if conspiring with them. “Well, I’ll definitely be asking for some of the details on what those might’ve been later. But first, I have to ask. Robin, how did you meet Phantom? He’s that ghost in the black-and-white jumpsuit, right? As far as I know, he’s only ever been seen in Amity. And you’ve certainly never been here before.”

Tim took a breath, this was the moment. “Yep, that’s him. And, well, it may be strange, but I knew him before he was ever Phantom.”

“Before he was Phantom? Do you mean…” Steve let his voice trail off.

Tim let out a low sigh and closed his eyes. He really had to sell this. “Yeah.” He made sure his voice was rough. “Yeah. I knew him before he died. He was one of my best friends growing up and we’ve known each other for years.”

Conner put a hand on his shoulder. “Rob…”

When even Steve needed a second to figure out how to reply, Tim figured he did a good enough job. “So you know him when he was alive,” Steve said. “Who was he? Where did he live?”

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that,” said Tim. “He was young when he died and his family don’t need people harassing them. They’ve been through a lot. And I know Phantom’s reputation isn’t the best.”

Steve let out another put-upon sigh. “And there you go being reasonable when all I want is the hot gossip. Fine, no questions about who Phantom was. I’m sure you were thrilled when you found out he came back as a ghost, though.”

Tim laughed and was glad Steve was able to change the mood of the interview so quickly without him doing anything. “Oh absolutely. I near about had a heart attack when he called me up out of the blue to say he was a ghost now! This was my first opportunity to visit him since, you know.”

Conner nudged him. “So he brought us along for the ride.”

Steve hummed. “So for the rest of you, this is your first time meeting Phantom?”

“Yep,” said Bart. “I like him. He’s cool.”

“So, Impulse, you think he’s trying to help us. Because it seems like whenever he shows up, things get broken and we have to spend days or weeks and tens of thousands on repairs.”

“Robin knows more about it than I do,” said Bart, “but I guess what let Phantom cross back over to Earth is allowing other ghosts to cross back over. Phantom just wants to spend more time with his living family and friends. The others ghosts…”

“They want more than that,” finished Tim. “Phantom’s explained it to me a bit. They all have something driving them that can only be fulfilled on Earth. And they don’t care what they have to do to satisfy that drive. So Phantom steps in to try and prevent them from causing too much damage or hurting anyone. Then he forces them back to the dimension they come from.”

“In fact,” added Cassie. “We spent all night talking with Phantom and we got his side of the story on several of his fights since he first came to Amity. We’ve written it all up and submitted them to the local paper, so look in the OpEds over the next few days if you want to know the truth.”

“Oh, well now you’ve definitely got me intrigued! I think I will. Anything you'd be willing to share with us now?”

“Do you remember how a month or two ago, a giant robot was seen in Amity?” asked Tim.

“Not something I’m likely to forget!”

Tim laughed. “I’m sure! Well, what you don’t know is that he crossed over to Earth from the Ghost Zone about three or four days before you ever saw him. Phantom kept him from gaining a physical body for days before Technus was able to get past him.”

“Really? So you’re saying that without Phantom, we would’ve been dealing with that robot for a lot longer?”

“Yep.”

Steve asked several more questions about Phantom. Some serious: How does he plan to decrease property damage going forward? We’re coaching him on how to move a fight and deescalate conflict. And some light hearted: So I heard he’s a dog person? Oh, absolutely. A ghost dog adopted him a few weeks ago.

Then the questions turned more personal as he moved on from Phantom and asked about their lives and exploits. And before they knew it, the interview was over.

“Thanks for reaching out,” Steve said as soon as they left the recording studio. “You are by far the biggest guests I’ve ever had on.”

“Thanks for agreeing to have us on so last minute,” said Tim.

“How could I possibly say no?”

-----

Hope you enjoyed the interview! I probably won't go into detail for the TV one since it'd just be rehashing the same information.

I no longer do tag lists, but I do have a Subscription Post if you want to be notified of updates.

#dpxdc #tim excels at interviews #his parents trained him for it from the cradle #and the rest have done them before #and they actually care about making danny look good #so theyre gonna behave #steve didnt sleep a wink before this interview #he got the email and was half convinced it was a prank #had a backup show planned and everything #the staff totally made copies of this show #and everyone took home a tape #(management turned a blind eye though thats usually discouraged)

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spacecasehobbit · 13 days

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So... Saltburn is not a romcom and Emerald Fennell has explicitly said that we're meant to read Felix as an awful person, yet there's so much talk about Oliver's frankly shoddy manipulation that worked 99% only through luck and Catton hubris, and so little talk about Felix's sketchy as hell behavior.

By which I mean, how Felix Catton displays a number of deliberate emotionally manipulative tactics towards Oliver and waves massive red flags all over the screen throughout the movie.

He love bombs Oliver in their first meeting, which is a deliberate manipulation tactic designed to overwhelm the victim with affection and positive attention early on - with out of the gate love declarations and overly effusive praise among the hallmark love bombing examples - and often is a precursur to nastier manipulative tactics down the line such as extreme withdrawal of affection when angered even by minor things (like when Felix ghosts Oliver after Oliver pretty accurately calls him spoiled for letting his room get so disgusting), and attempting to control the victim's appearance and behavior (the first that come immediately to mind include things Felix does when Oliver first arrives in Saltburn, such as: failing to inform Oliver in advance that the staff would go through his suitcase while he was occupied elsewhere and inform Felix's mother of anything they found noteworthy without Oliver's knowledge or consent; failing to inform Oliver that he would need dressy atire for dinners at Saltburn, and thus locking Oliver into wearing Felix's old clothes; even the razor Felix gets Oliver without any advance warning, under the excuse that Elspeth requires all the men in the house to be clean shaven).

Felix is also the one to initiate the oversharing of personal information during their first real conversation, in which he shares a bunch of very personal and likely traumatic details from Farleigh's past (in spite of knowing already that Farleigh and Oliver already know each other and don't get along), after which he badgers Oliver into divulging private details of his own past. Oliver even initially tries to offer a more true but less satisfying answer that, "there's not much really to say," about his life, which is a perfectly reasonable way to answer personal questions from someone you barely know. People are allowed boundaries around when and to whom they divulge personal information, whether or not that information involves trauma, but Felix keeps pushing until Oliver gives him an answer he finds more satisfying, at which point he rewards Oliver with more love bomb-y praise and attention.

And then Felix promptly turns around and proves exactly how right Oliver was not to trust him with anything private and true, by sharing Oliver's private confessions with all of his friends - including Farleigh, who, as Felix is still aware, already knows Oliver and doesn't like him.

(It's not unreasonable, either, to read this as part of his isolating Oliver, when he shares all of Oliver's private 'confessions' with his friends at Oxford, classist kids who wind up looking down on Oliver for his supposed poverty, only to then get mad at Farleigh for sharing the same information with Felix's family - specifically Felix's mother, from whom we can infer Felix gets his voyeuristic interest in lonely people with troubled pasts - and prove with his comment to Farleigh of, "that's private!" that he knew the whole time that he was sharing information that should have been private behind Oliver's back.)

Then Felix takes this shiny new friend of his, a guy who supposedly grew up in a house full of drug and alcohol problems that destroyed his parents' lives, promptly invites him to all sorts of parties and bars and clubs full of rampant alcohol and drug abuse, and convinces him to develop an addiction of his own when he gets him to start smoking.

And of course, to top off the big red flag behaviors of a controlling manipulator, there's Felix's massive boundary violations when he feels entitled not only to answer Oliver's phone without even telling him about it, but then plans a surprise visit to Oliver's mother in spite of knowing, at that point in time, only that Oliver supposedly did not get along with his mother and viewed her only as a toxic and traumatic part of his childhood that he wants nothing to do with anymore. In terms of Felix's behavior there, it does not matter that Oliver was lying, because Felix did not know that Oliver was lying. He simply saw no issue with forcing Oliver into what he only had cause to believe would be a stressful and traumatic experience, one that Oliver had explicitly stated he did not want before even getting to Saltburn and then repeatedly asked Felix not to do on the drive to Prescot, because Felix does what Felix wants even when his supposed best mate is literally terrified and begging him to turn around in the car next to him.

Oliver displays his share of toxic behavior and makes a series of increasingly terrible choices culminating in murder, but Felix is very far from an innocent victim.

Oliver thought Felix genuinely liked him, and he wanted to give Felix what he wanted in return. The problem with that, and one of the big reasons things went so badly for them both (in, honestly, such a narratively satisfying way!), is that the things Felix wanted from a 'friend' were unhealthy things from the start.

#saltburn #saltburn meta #felix catton meta #and the effectiveness of these tactics #when used by someone pretty and charming #can be seen outside the movie in just how many people think felix *is* just pretty and charming and genuinely nice!#he is a well written character #to the point that he cons a good chunk of the audience too

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dead-girl-tells-stories · 6 months

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Almost finished reading Dungeon Meshi and I got an idea

So in Dungeon Meshi or Delicious in Dungeon, there are these... dungeons.

And from what I have gathered dungeons can be made naturally or artificially but both types have the same few things in common.

They are made to contain demons

They attract adventures

The dungeons have lords who manage/control the dungeon and are given the power to do so by the demons

I know that I'm skimming over some important bits, but long story short, the demons come from an alternate dimension called 'The Infinite Realm' and feed off of people's desires, the Lord of the Dungeon's specifically.

That being said... (incoming dp x dc prompt)

Beings from the Infinite Realms aren't ghosts but demons. And while they do still have obsessions, they lack desires. And so, they've become something they hunger for.

Danny learns this the hard way when he accidentally eats his parents' desire to hunt 'ghosts'.

When the endless, all-consuming hunger, that had been growing inside himself became just a bit satisfied by the action, he got scared. He ran to Clockwork, who immediately explained everything to him.

From there he became terrified. He didn't want to eat people's desires, especially considering that he had some of his own. But CW explained that while other demons will most likely never be satisfied no matter how many desires they consume, because of Danny's halfa status he may be able to. (Also it would be a bad thing if the baby starves itself. No one wants the baby to starve!)

To test out this theory, CW pulls (more than) a couple of strings, and soon his dungeon was set up in Gotham City in the DC universe.

He felt a bit bad since he had to set up shop in another ghost's/demon's territory, but Lady Gotham seemed to have taken a liking to him.

Danny takes his time searching for the most desperate person he can find, (Lady Gotham is leading him to some of the most desperate people in her city, aka the Batfam.), and appears to one of them as a fawn (signifying his hunger and current 'lack' of power). He then looks deep into their mind and offers them the power to fulfill all their desires.

The Batfam? They should be better than this, but damn they were in a tight spot and the city is going to shit because the rouges have been more active than ever, and their family is on the verge of crumbling!... And the answer to fix it all was right there, just within their reach.

They held the fawn in their arms gently. Its ivory wings, coat of starlight, and piercing Lazurus green eyes. Gotham began to change.

A few years later, some members of the JL and the JLD are once again trying their hand at clearing the dungeon but are a bit discouraged because last time their team was wiped out completely.

It was inconvenient how their powers were nullified whenever they were inside the dungeon, but they had yet to find a spell to counteract it.

In an attempt to get past the third floor, they teamed with a team called Team Phantom, which comprised two young adult siblings, their 12-year-old sister, and a few teenagers.

Morally, they were against this. No one this young should be trying to clear the dungeon! But on the other hand, this team was the closest to getting to the fourth floor.

Sucking it up, they teamed up with the young dungeon dwellers and quickly found out why they were so close to getting to the third floor.

These kids were skilled. These kids were powerful. These kids were trained. On top of that, they didn't care about their lives! Because these kids? They wouldn't- no! They couldn't die, and they were using it to their advantage.

The JL/JLD now had much more to worry about than clearing the dungeon.

#dp x dc #dc x dp #dp x dc prompt #dcxdp #dc x dp prompt #dp x dc crossover #dpxdc #dp dc crossover #inspired by dungeon meshi #go read it #or watch it #Danny likes delicious meals so he chooses complex people #it could be a single Batfam member that becomes the lord of the dungeon #if thats the case any of them could work #but the batfam as a whole?#*maniacal laughter*#We all know who team phantom is soooo #if Gotham wasn't a hub for the supernatural before it certainly is now #this was a ploy made by CW and LG so that the baby wouldn't starve itself #they didn't expect it to go like this #this is also me pushing my 'Danny is a cool biblically accurate space deer god looking thing with wings thats so wynorrific #it drives you mad by looking at him but you can't fucking stop so you're stuck in the madness of his horrifying beauty' agenda #also #Danny becomes extremely morally grey in this #not good #not evil #just hungry #sorry if this is shit i wrote the first half half asleep and the next half the next morning when I had lost the idea #*cries*#*sobs*

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orqheuss · 1 year

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In any version of reality

(Ominis Gaunt/F!Reader FLUFF)

Reincarnation!Soulmate AU

Summary:

In the world of soulmates, ties told through memories of past lives and reincarnation, Ominis was sure that he had to be a very new soul. *** Ominis Gaunt was more sure than anything in his life that he did not have a soulmate. He had heard tales from others about their experiences, how lovely it was to finally find the one you had been searching for through any timeline, and he had resigned himself to the fact that his soul was too new to have a past life. But, after hearing you sing in the deserted music room sends him on a journey back in time, could he have truly found the person he had been longing for since before the dawn of creation?

Story is based off of "Epic iii" from the Hadestown 2017 Original Cast Recording.

Word Count: 4.7k

In the world of soulmates, ties told through memories of past lives and reincarnation, Ominis was sure that he had to be a very new soul. He had heard stories told through grapevines, whispers in the night of people finding their loves at a young age; how their timeless histories came flooding back to them like a torrential downpour of emotion they couldn’t identify until they tasted their loves name on their lips— heard their voice flitter through their ears like a soft ocean breeze for the first time. Some said it happened suddenly, as soon as they brushed against each other or looked into each other's eyes for the first time. Those people said it was like being struck by a falling star, burning to the touch and gloriously wonderful all at the same time. Some said it happened gradually, after years and years of knowing each other, only to be triggered by an oddly familiar moment in time or a feeling, like a song murmured from an ancient gramophone in the corner of a room they’d long forgotten about. Those people said it was warm, like a blanket you’d just cast a drying charm on— like they were coming home after a long trip and the hearth was already lit for their arrival. No matter how much he longed to tell stories like this himself, how much he yearned to find that grand, timeless love that he could only read about in books, the universe did not have a past life to spare him.

For a while he blamed his parents, like they were the ones that ripped him into the world before one of the many ghosts floating around in the stratosphere could latch onto him and call him theirs, but he knew that they had no control over ethereal beings like that. Then, he blamed his disability for his woebegone-ness. Every story he had ever heard told tales of looking into their soulmate's eyes and seeing the world as it was for the first time— could it be that because he could not see he would never know the feeling of holding someone's gaze and seeing yourself as you truly were the day your ageless soul was born into the world like a bursting supernova? Not knowing anyone else that suffered the same blindness as him, he didn’t have anything else to go off of. And so, that was the only answer his feebly human mind could give him— the only thing that actually made sense in his brain.

Being born without sight had never really bothered Ominis much until he got to Hogwarts. His childhood home was dreadfully quiet, and very few members of his family were home at a time, so he didn’t have any sounds invading his sensitive ears very often. All of that changed as soon as he crossed the threshold of the grandiloquent school. The tall ceilings echoed all voices like a cathedral tower echoed the hymns of a choir— he knew everyone's business better than his own, sometimes before his peers even learned of it themselves. With that came the knowledge of everyone's soulmate encounters, each story different from the last but just as magical each time. Down the castle stairs, tucked away in the corner near the one-eyed witch, Ominis heard Adelaide Oakes recount her story of brushing against a muggle boy in her village and seeing a post-colonial British soldier standing at her doorstep, stretches of farmland spanning farther than her eyes can see over his shoulder. In potions, he heard Garreth Weasley whisper to his cauldron partner about how he had known his soulmate for years, only realizing that they were meant to be after seeing them lounging on the shore of the pond behind his house— one moment they were strewn across the damp, summer-green grass, and the next they were curled around his past in a bed made of purple silk, the Paris skyline just beyond his reach through their bay windowed apartment. He could distinctly recall all of the details of Sebastian’s revelation, having heard how he saw himself galloping through a field of flowers with a lovely princesses arms wrapped around his waist, pressing her delicate fingerprints into his shiny chain-mail armor as they laughed into the sun many a time before drifting off into a dreamless sleep in their common room. Even Leander Prewett found his one true match, spinning the tale to anyone who would hear in their herbology class about how he was a British king once, married to a beautiful woman dressed in green with a matching choker necklace of pearls and emeralds— how the large “B” charm caught the light just right during their private garden strolls to make her blue eyes sparkle (Ominis also remembered the next day when he stumbled upon the frazzled Gryffindor in the library annex, filled with dread as he poured quite anxiously through the books and reading about that particular necklace, as well as the pretty neck that went along with it. Poor sod).

No, Ominis Gaunt had not found his soulmate yet, nor did he think he ever would, and he was perfectly fine with that, thank you very much.

At least, that’s what he told everyone when they asked.

What didn’t help his case, unfortunately, was that he was irrevocably and incandescently infatuated with the new fifth year. It had taken him some time to get used to their presence in his inner circle. All of his friends had a very distinct magical signature that he memorized after knowing them for some time— every magical being had one, really. Magic to Ominis felt like the fizz of cider against his skin, some slightly more carbonated than others and carrying a different taste in his mouth. Anne felt like the sparkling citrus water that the kitchens would bring out on particularly hot days before finals. Sebastian felt like the burn of firewhiskey on an autumn night, the bonfire in the center of the circle warming the tips of his nose and ears. Both were refreshing and lovely in their own right, but his newest friend was something he had never felt before. He was never able to feel someone else's soul under their skin and determine how old it was, but there was no way you were a young, or even new soul like he was. Even your magic felt old. Your signature was the most distinct one he had ever felt in his short life; it wasn’t a soft fizz like the others, or a pleasant warmth, it was a firework in his chest. You smelled like the smoke after a particularly rowdy Guy Fawkes Night and felt like tiny smoldering ashes falling against his skin, not too hot, but more of a pleasant kiss of heat. He got used to your voice quickly, no matter how your laugh made his knees want to buckle and cause his heart to race faster than a stampeding graphorn, but your magic took some time, even after he found out about your proclivity to ancient magic. There was something so distinctly familiar about it to him, like he had met you before coming to the castle. He didn’t recall ever doing so, but his family threw so many parties in his youth he wouldn’t really question it if he did. Once he started to get used to the feeling, maybe even crave it a little, he realized it was too late to stop the tumble his feelings were taking off your sweet, summer-side cliff.

Ominis knew that you hadn’t found your soulmate yet, but it was only a matter of time before your soft brushes and lingering stares disappeared into the air like everything else in his life. He was doomed to never have anyone by his side, but he knew deep in his heart that you were not destined for loneliness like he was. You were a flowering weeping willow at the edge of a monumental body of water, and he the lowly lake lapping at your petals as they fell, forever in the others orbit but never within arms reach.

That’s how Ominis found himself wandering that day, high up the many stairs of the magical castle and steadily walking towards the deserted music room, his favorite place as of late. Very few people knew where the room was, let alone that the school even had a music room to begin with. Here, he could wallow in his self pity with only the soft sound of his piano to keep him company. About a week ago a line of melody came to him in his dreams, soft and sweet but full of so much empty melancholy that he was on his feet at that very instant, quickly jotting down the notation on one of the many pieces of sheet music that he had lying around his desk. Ever since then, he had gone to the musical tower in the sky to sit by his lonesome and chart out chords like constellations. The song was ethereal to his ears, something that came from the universe itself as a gift that he was destined to write. Ominis was nearly done with it after hours of slaving over the parchment and quill, his fingertips surely staining the ivory keys of the baby grand piano to the point where the house elves despised his presence. He was like a man possessed whenever the melody came to mind, like something in the world was trying to tell him something very important but it couldn’t find the words to do so. The notes rose and fell like a bird flying south for the winter, wings stretched across the sky, swooping and diving only to rise again and kiss the sun. Some parts felt like a walk through a beautiful meadow, the sun on his shoulders and the wind blowing through his hair. Others were dark, like descending a staircase into the very center of the world with no light to guide you, just its ghostly melody to call you home. And some were both at the same time— a shady spot under a corkscrewed sycamore, tiny graves for the woodland creatures of the forest taken over by the wilds of nature, hidden off the beaten path in lamentable isolation. It told a story of everlasting, encompassing love that was ripped away too soon, found again after searching every possible and impossible place for their hand to hold, only to have to part ways once again until their effervescent hereafter. It reminded him of some of the muggle mythology he picked up last year for some light reading during one of his bouts of nightmares— how each tale began weaving together a love that would break the very fabric of the universe until it was taken from the pair by Fates' terrible string. The blond could tell that the song needed lyrics to be complete; Ominis was many things, but he was not a poet. So, much like his future to come, the song would forever remain unfinished. Even still, his forlorn melody kept him company, and he was perfectly fine with that.

Today was different; Ominis knew that as soon as he rounded the bend to the music room and felt a presence inside. The blond cursed to himself, resigned to find another corner of the castle to mope in his hopeless romanticism for the time being until the other person left. He turned on his heel and was about to leave when a sound stopped him in his tracks, his ears pricking up like a startled deer. From the crack in the door came a haunting voice, soothing through a melody that was vaguely familiar to the boy. He curiously took a few steps closer, pressing his ear to the tiny opening to hear better. The voice was one of the most beautiful things he had ever heard. Its tone was clear like the church bells outside his family home, soaring around the room up to the top of its spiraled ceilings and diving downwards towards the bordeaux patterned cherry floor. It caught the acoustics of the room like a wind chime in the beginnings of spring, and his entire body visibly softened at each lift and fall of its gentle ballad. Ominis listened intently to the lyrics as they made their way through his ears, swirling around his brain and kissing him just behind the eyes with winsome adoration.

Heavy and hard is the heart of the king King of iron, king of steel The heart of the king loves everything Like the hammer loves the nail.

The woman’s voice was like honey in his favorite tea, soothing and with just the right amount of sweetness. Her dulcet tones took Ominis into their arms and waltzed with his heartstrings like two ghosts lost to time. He couldn’t help but keep listening, diving deeper and deeper into her saccharine song.

But the heart of a man is a simple one Small and soft, flesh and blood And all that it loves is a woman A woman is all that it loves. And Hades is king of the scythe and the sword He covers the world in the color of rust He scrapes the sky and scars the earth And he comes down heavy and hard on us.

Hades. Something about the name shook the blond to his core, the word feeling strange at the tip of his tongue like a word he knew but couldn’t remember. Little flashes of light burst behind his closed eyes, bright but not painful, carrying the feeling of…grass under his feet? He wasn’t truly sure what he was feeling, but he knew it wasn’t the wooden floors of the hallway anymore. For a moment he could feel the luscious heat of the spring on his skin and hear the soft call of whippoorwills from the tree tops just beyond where he stood, even though it was a cold and stormy winter outside the stone fortress walls. He continued to listen to the song, careful to not let himself be known to the angel of music just out of his reach.

But even that hardest of hearts unhardened Suddenly, when he saw her there Persephone in her mother's garden Sun on her shoulders, wind in her hair.

Persephone. Why was that name familiar too? Why could he suddenly feel the phantom of long, thick hair stream through his fingers like a waterfall, the tresses gently caressing his skin in a way that he only dreamed of? Ominis flexed his fingers, swaying his hand in the air to feel around for a sudden body in front of him; he found nothing there except dust and stale air. The scent of wildflowers invaded his nose harshly, leaving him twitching and fighting off a very unbecoming sneeze until the strong scent pittered away to a delicate gale of sugared anemone and aster flower. The taste of nectar and pollen were heavy on his tongue. He listened closer, eager to hear and experience more. There must be a charm on their voice, the boy reasoned. That had to be the reason he was experiencing all of these things so suddenly.

The smell of the flowers she held in her hand And the pollen that fell from her fingertips And suddenly Hades was only a man With a taste of nectar upon his lips, singing: La la la la la la la…

It was like suddenly being dropped into the icy waters of the black lake. That melody, no wonder it was so familiar to him; it was the piece of music he had been working on nonstop for the past week! Just as the realization dawned on him, the magical aura of the person behind the door struck him harder than anything he had ever felt before— harder than when he had first felt it outside the Undercroft what felt like years ago.

It was you. You were the one singing.

You were the missing piece to his lonely symphony.

Seeing flashes of your past self did not feel like how Ominis originally thought. It wasn’t quick like a speeding bullet into the brain, or loud like a confringo smacking into the pillars of the Undercroft. The flashback started soft and hazy— his vision blackening around his normal shadows and all sense but sight returning first. First came his smell, his hearing, his touch, and his taste while he listened to your silvery cadence fade away into the heavens. All of the feelings that had come one at a time earlier suddenly slammed into him in an influx of sensations, shocking his system into a more startling consciousness than before. Lastly came his sight, coloring his once grey and silhouetted world with a plethora of hues that he had never heard of before. If the boy was being honest, in all the moments where he had imagined finding his soulmate, he hadn’t pictured anything at all. He had never known the gift of sight, so how could he truly prepare himself for what it meant to see? Was that what green was, in the grass below his shined oxfords? Was that blue, in the sky above that stretched on forever? Was that yellow, in the little bumblebee that buzzed around his head searching for a flower to land on? There was so much that he wanted to see, so much that he wanted to know now that he could. His subconscious reminded him that this was not the time for that though, when he spotted a figure bent at the waist in the garden just over the hill from him.

Ominis gulped against the knot forming in his throat, the lump pounding with the beat of his heart just under his ribs as he stepped out of the trees and into the clearing. He had never seen a creature as beautiful as you before; it was like everything in his life had led up to this very moment of meeting. Watching the way your hair glimmered under the summer sun like the jewels adorning his home as you tended your mothers garden, he was nothing more than a man in the presence of a nymph of the forest— something otherworldly, something too beautiful to touch. The sun danced across your skin like the finest silk, creating star-kissed freckles at the apex of your shoulders and down your toned arms, and oh, how could he do anything but remove his hat from his head and gaze at you with awed, enraptured revelry? The air around you smelled like his future— like pomegranates and the promise of forever. He felt in his very being that you were his one love, far before he truly understood the meaning of the word. The emotion could not be named with words, only the feeling of coming home. All he knew is that he needed to know you more than he needed to breathe, more than he needed to eat and drink and sleep and live. Your souls sang in tandem with each other, calling your names into the void and waiting for the shout to come back to them— to sing with them forevermore. Ominis was useless under your charm, like a siren luring an unsuspecting but oh so willing sailor to his doom under the frothing sea waves. He had never spoken to you, but he knew in that moment he would happily die by your hand if you would just meet his gaze one time. He would build whole worlds for you if that was what you wished— tear down entire galaxies if it would make you smile his way.

All of his dreams came true seconds later when you stood from your hunched position, tossing your hair over your shoulder in the intricate braid you wore, each strand decorated with the honeysuckle that bloomed at your feet, before turning and staring at the man before you. You startled at first, unaware that you were being admired for so long by someone so breathtaking. The blond haired beauty under your maple tree was like winter incarnate. His hair was quiffed and slicked away from his face, allowing you to see his strong jaw and perfectly sculpted facial structure. Your eyes drank him in like a garden in a drought with his tasteful three-piece suit, black from the collar at his neck to the wing-tips of his shoes— an unusual color for somewhere so sunny. He was as pale as fresh fallen snow with tiny moles breaking up the color— birdseed trapped in a thin layer of ice. He would be called monochrome if not for his eyes. They reminded you of the Grecian sea, those eyes. Like two pools of seafoam, or two small bouquets of baby's breath and cornflower. Your heart called to him like a lighthouse across a stormy ocean. Fate rarely ruled your life, you’d decided that from a young age after listening to the warnings of your mother, but if the Fates brought you him, you would listen to their words from now on. With one glance it felt like you had known him for years, and yet you didn’t even know his name. He was your past, your present, maybe even your future if you allowed it. He was not one of the flowers like you, more like one of the dead, but you’d happily plant your gardens in his domain. You’d plant flowers that thrived in the dark and the cold, flowers that only bloomed under moonlight, if it meant the universe would be kind enough to let you keep him.

It was you that spoke first, breaking the spellbound trance you both were in from the first moment of contact. “Hi…”

Your voice was like the sweetest music ever played— sweeter than those of the muses, those of the deific. They were nothing, for it was you who was truly divine. He was the moon, and how he longed to know the sun.

His voice was little more than a breath as he murmured in return, still caught up in the sheer transcendence of your beauty. “Hello…”

Your soft laugh shook him from his stupor, softening the frozen heart in his chest as you warmed him in both body and soul. He cleared his throat, shifting his feet for a moment before taking a bold but respectful step forwards, his hand reaching out for yours like a sunflower reaching towards the brightest star in the sky. Around you, the mockingbirds began to sing a tune for your love. You couldn’t help but think it was familiar, like something from a dream you’d had long ago. Their soft song echoed through the trees, each new whistle bringing a new melodious harmony.

La la la la la la la~

“My name is Hades,” he said, the softest smile you had ever seen turning the corners of his mouth.

You return his gaze shyly. There was a smear of dirt across your face, painted across the turn of your nose and the rosy apple of your right cheek like a thick splattering of freckles. The man thought he had never seen anything so beautiful.

“Persephone,” you whispered, smiling ruefully at the flustered pink that colored his face. “What took you so long?”

In a moment it was all over— Ominis’ world dyed grey once again and only the shadows of the things around him visible. Never had he mourned his sight before, but before he had not known the beauty of seeing the night sky in your eyes; he did not know the delightful turn of your lip when you grinned or the crinkle of your nose when you laughed. He knew now that you were not the thing that he could not have, you were the thing that the universe created just for him to hold. You and him were not just a weeping willow and a babbling brook; you were the water that breathed life into your roots and the tree that fed the fish under his waves. You were not simply the sun and the moon, passing constantly but never crossing paths for long; you were an eclipse, two celestial beings dancing together and showering the world with your lovely glow.

You both had done this dance before many a time— taken many a shape before. How could he have ever thought of you as anything other than his other half, his soulmate, his world? He revolved around you, and your benign gravity kept him steady.

That pull was why he had just enough courage to push open the door to the music room, stepping into the sunlit space and basking in the feeling of your seraph-like presence. Ominis knew exactly where you were when he spoke, his soul knowing the feeling of yours for longer than this earth had been breathing.

“Persephone.” It was a breath. A whisper. A prayer.

You looked at him like he hung the very stars you love so much in the sky. There was no one else in that moment, just the two of you and the soft echo of your past lingering in the lines of sheet music strewn across the piano bench.

“Hades,” you simpered, a smile glowing in your voice.

It was moments later that he was upon you, hugging you like your body needed to be a part of his, kissing you like you were the oxygen he needed to live. You met him with the same enthusiasm, finally whole after years of being apart. You pressed your face into his neck, soothing tiny kisses along any skin you can reach, stretching from his collarbones to the tip of his nose. He smiled down at you, his hands reaching up to cradle your face like he was holding starlight in his palms.

“I never thought I would find you again.”

You laugh, your own hands reaching up to cover his. His heart skips a beat when you nuzzle into his skin. “I knew we would find each other again, just as I knew the sun would rise again every morning.”

He was frowning now, a look that did not suit his face in the slightest. He couldn’t help but feel insecure after his years of festering in his terrible self worth. “But how?”

You flipped his world on its axis, removing his hands from your face and in turn placing your palms upon his, caressing your thumb along his jawbone. “Ominis, my darling Hades, did you think I ate those pomegranate seeds unwillingly? Did you think I did not wish to fall into your darkness with flowers in my hair?” You stood on your toes, bringing his face down further and raising yours to rest your temple against his. You found your happiness in his tiny smile. “My love, I chose you that day in the garden. I would find you in any lifetime, any version of reality that calls our name. I would never let you stay too far from me, that I promise to the gods themselves.”

He sealed your words with a kiss, accepting and agreeing with your terms proudly and eagerly. Never would you ever separate again.

And so there you stayed that day, curled in the far corner of the music room with your soft, no longer so lonely melody singing from the baby grand piano. You took turns feeding each other grapes from the vine, laughing like you were the world's sunlight and lounging under the tresses of your own created sky. Behind that, now closed, door was the real world, a terrible thing that brought torment and woe to even the happiest of souls, but in that little space at the top of the tower, you had found your own personal cosmos.

The king of the dead had finally found his queen of the flowers once again.

like what you read? here's more!

#tina speaks #hogwarts legacy #ominis gaunt x mc #ominis gaunt x reader #ao3 #ao3 fic #ao3 writer #ominis gaunt x you #ominis gaunt #soulmate au #harry potter soulmate au #reincarnation au #fluff #romantic fluff #hades and persephone #hades #persephone #greeky mythology #masterlist

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dani-says-stuff · 1 year

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Two Skeptics And A Believer Walk Into A Haunted Room...

❥ Back to the Control Center

❥ I'm so so so sorry for the shitty and abrupt ending on this one, I just got bored and kiiinda ran out of ideas on where to take the last 20 or so minutes of the video... who knows I might make a pt. 2 and finish the video at some point if I can think of something to add

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Tommyinnit x fem!reader

Summary: Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke right? But, it just so happens to be a very accurate description of you, Tommy, and Jack entering the Ram Inn for your guest appearance on the Sam and Colby youtube channel

Word Count: 2.3k

Warnings: creepy stuff, hauntings, demons, language, probably an inaccurate spirit box session, inconsistent capitalization, shitty writing.. this is definately not one of my better ones

Dialogue Key:

Y/N

Tommy

Jack

Sam

Colby

James, the tour guide

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The group of you began in a courtyard of the Ram Inn, Jack to your right and Tommy to your left while Sam and Colby stood before you.

Tom had originally just asked Jack to come with him for the video, assuming you'd want nothing to do with it after how annoyed you seemed during the entire 'uncle nasty' situation. He quickly realized his mistake when you followed him around the apartment for an hour begging him to ask Sam and Colby if you could come along.

"And what about you?" Sam asked, eyes trained on you.

Jack had finished telling the story of his experience on stream and Tom declared his adamancy that ghosts aren't real, but you'd yet to speak.

"Oh I believe 100%" you spoke with a smile, completely ignoring your boyfriend perched beside you staring at you as if you were insane, "I've always wanted to try something like this, I just couldn't justify spending all the money on equipment."

"Yeah" Sam drawled out scratching the back of his neck, "it does get a bit expensive."

"Exactly!" you chirped, gesturing to the two older boys before you, "but since you already have it... now I get to do it free of charge!"

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You quickly noticed, that despite his insistence that everything was fine, Tom was starting to get jumpier than normal inside the building.

Usually, whenever a camera is around, your boyfriend became a hyper-sugar-high-nighmare that would be bouncing off the walls and jumping all over the place. Now, however, it seemed he barely registered the camera being on at all.

Instead, he seemed dazed, taking special care to analyze every corner of the room and register every individual item placed in the general area. If you didn't know about the demons that were said to call this place their home, you'd say the scariest thing was the way Tom was acting.

The guide soon gathered the group in the center of the room to begin the tour, "There's two main demons, One's an incubus and one's a succubus. John, who owned the building, he was attacked by them quite a lot."

You closed your eyes, lowering your head slightly in embarrassment for what was to come. You'd been dating Tom long enough to know exactly where his mind was at.

"So was he like... into demon..."

You didn't expect that though.

"Why would you ask that?" you hissed slapping his shoulder, before looking back to your guide, "was he though? I am kinda curious now."

Jack mumbled, shaking his head similar to that of a parent watching their kids doing something they shouldn't, "Children."

"No." James responded, drawing out his answer as if deliberating in his mind, "No, no-no."

Tommy looked down at you right as you looked up at him. The both of you stared at each other for all of two seconds before nodding in conclusion.

"Yeah-"

"-he definitely did."

As the rest of the group continued talking over the specifics of the demons in the Inn, it took all of your strength to keep from laughing at your boyfriend.

"So like" Tommy cut off the guide, "what are the boundaries sexually? like I'm not trying to be immature... this is just like really freaking me out-"

"Tom!" you gasped through laughter, "it's a demon! Love, I dont think it has boundaries."

The rest of the group began laughing, everyone but Tommy.

"Well what about my boundaries!" he complained hands splayed across his chest, only making you laugh harder "Don't laugh at me! I'm being serious!"

James, the tour guide entered the conversation, "No, is not no."

Toms's facial expression dropped, one hand going for your wrist while the other continued gesturing out before him as he spoke, "I- Well, mate that's not how that works!"

By now, you were practically on the floor with laughter, the only thing keeping you up was your arm raised high above you in Tommy's grip.

"They're a demon, I don't think they care."

"Well, I care!"

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"This room by far is the most... decorated?" you spoke, looking around at all the creepy items placed around the room.

"Yeah, it's like theyre trying to make this place scary" Sam agreed, looking down at a dusty mirror desplaying the words 'help me' at the back wall of the room.

Jack took the singular chair in the room, while the rest of the group stayed standing, listening as the tour continued.

Well, continued for all of a few minutes when a candle fell from the table behind where Jack sat.

You jumped, grabbing onto Tommy, "I didn't like-"

You were swiftly cut off by a girl's voice coming from the window, "Nope. I really didn't like that."

The group began freaking out, Sam moving closer to investigate the noise and Tommy tugging your arm behind him, shuffling in front of you. Creating as much space from that general area and you as he could.

"Hello?" he shouted, one arm holding you behind him and the other holding the Minecraft sword before him, "Hello? Can you check the window?"

Everyone began deliberating what was going on, trying to figure out an explanation for what was going on. By now, you were burrowing yourself into Tom's side, one of his arms securely wrapped around you, swinging the sword before the both of you as he tried to get the group to go check outside.

Sam tried to bring up the candle, but Tommy had his mind set on figuring out what was going on. The candle could wait, but if there were people waiting outside messing with you all, they could easily leave at any second.

However, after checking around several times, it became obvious that whatever you heard wasn't outside the hotel.

It had to have been inside.

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You all decided to cut the tour short and begin the investigation due to the amount of stuff you all seemed to be experiencing.

So, you all began the night in the witch's room with the spirit box.

"Is there anything here that wants to talk to us?"

"Please just say Hi or something" Tommy spoke bouncing anxiously on his feet, "I'm really just not having a good time-"

Ooh

Sam pointed down at the box, a smile growing on his face "Was that just a hello?"

Jack, on the other hand, wasnt as easily convinced, "Eh... it was a very faint something."

"Can you tell us a name? or who you might be?"

After a few moments of silence, Tommy and Jack made up an impromptu rap for the ghosts, and despite a few other unintelligible noises, nothing else seemed to happen in the room.

However, before leaving the room, you set up the REM pod on the bed just in case.

"I just remembered something" Sam spoke up when the REM pod began to go off in response to Jack, "The witch only likes respect..."

"Oh, thats right!" Colby shouted, "That's why we got the offerings-"

You whipped around, facing the tall raven-haired man behind you, eyebrows raised high, "I'm sorry... the what?"

"Yeah! The witch will only talk to people if she wants to. because like, if you're being disrespectful or too stupid she's like 'I don't wanna talk'"

You turned back, clicking your tongue and shrugging with fake sympathy as you faced Tommy. "You hear that?" you sighed, resting a hand on his shoulder, "Looks like we're gonna have to kick you out of this investigation."

Tommy sputtered looking around, "Wha- Why?"

Jack stepped forward, knowing where you were going with this, "Yeah mate," he added shaking his head sorrowfully, "You may have to wait outside for this one."

You and Jack looked at each other with a smirk,

"Ya know," you continued, "to keep you from acting-"

"-too stupid"

"-Too stupid"

Tommy looked at the both of you, mouth agape. "Common now, that was just mean."

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For the first Estes method run of the night, Tommy volunteered to go under as you all investigated the first floor. The rest of you now stood huddled around him as he sat in the rocking chair with the headphones on.

"Is there anybody here with us? you were just making the REM pod go off earlier"

Get Down.

"Were we being disrespectful upstairs?"

Me and You.

"Is anyone upstairs?"

I need you.

You furrowed your brows at that. Both Sam and Colby brought up the succubus, but neither directly asked the question, so you decided you would.

"Like the succubus? O-or Incubus I guess? I dunno one of the demons?"

silence.

"You said you needed something? What do you need?" you asked again, but still received no response.

You laughed a little to yourself, "Welp I guess it doesn't like me then." your eyes widened, "Actually, uh, ghosts, please do not confirm or deny that statement... I think I'd rather you be silent on that one, I don't really want to know."

The rest of the group, except for Tommy obviously, laughed a little under their breath at your words before continuing the investigation.

"Is there something evil here? something that's keeping you here?"

Going on.

"Something evil going on"

"That makes sense" you agreed, "It's the most haunted place in England right?" you asked looking between the two, "It has to have had something evil going on at some point"

"Yeah" Colby nodded, "this place has had "Evil" for around 5,000 years."

"We hear there's demons here, is that true?"

Earth Under.

"Like... buried?" you asked.

Jack nodded at your words, adding another question for the two boys, "Yeah, because a lot of shit was like, dug up here as well, right-"

Tunnel to the left.

"oh my god," you breathed out, "Isn't that where they dug up that grave?"

"Oh yeah!" Sam exclaimed running over into the next room, "this is where they found the tunnel that used to be a grave, which would've been-"

"-to my left."

The three of you scurried back into the room where Tommy and Colby stayed to continue talking to the ghosts.

"Are you talking about the tunnel in the other room? where did that lead to?"

no response.

Just as you were about to ask a question, Tom yelped, quickly grabbing the headphones and ripping them off due to a low, loud, and deep voice suddenly coming through the speakers.

next under, was Jack.

"What's your purpose here ghost? What do you want?"

The child

You and Tommy both began freaking out at that while Sam and Colby stood to the side somewhat confused.

"Everyone used to call me the child!" he yelled, a vice-like grip on your arm as he spoke to the other two and the camera, "Everyone would call me the child!"

"Woah... whats even weirder" Sam explained, "was the bones they found underneath here were a child's."

"Well, uh, that's good" your voice shook slightly, "that means it might not be referring to you then."

"Do- do you mean tunnel child or- or Tom child?"

no answer.

"ya know," you spoke nervously, "I kinda wanted to try, but now I'm not too sure."

Yes.

"oh no." you laughed, "I-uh, I didn't like that at all."

"Are you sure you do not want to try?" Sam asked, laughter in his tone, "I think they want you to"

Yes.

"Well..." you drawled, "I don't really uh, I don't really know... we seem to be getting a lot here without me doing that.."

"We are going back to the witch's room next to give her an offering" Colby mentioned, "you could do it there if you'd like. We didn't get much activity up there."

"True" you trailed off, thinking it over, "Yeah sure, I'll do it there."

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Not too long later, you were now sat in a different chair up in the witch's room, getting ready for the Estes method after giving the witch her new Minecraft creeper and scrub-daddy offerings.

"Nah" you spoke, waving Tom over near you, "You sit right there and give me your hand" you demanded pointing to the floorboards to your side.

"Why?"

"Because I know how you are. No way I'm letting you float around this room to scare me and tap on my shoulders and shit- sit down."

And with that, Tommy sat on the floor, hand folded in yours as you put the headphones on and pulled down the blindfold.

"Is anyone here with us?"

Nothing.

"Elspeth, are you here with us?"

You jumped in your chair, not quite ready to hear anything come through the headphones.

Yes.

"Have you found us disrespectful?"

One.

"One of us was disrespectful?"

"Probably fucking Tom." Jack scoffed, rolling his eyes.

"AY! Why'd you say that!"

"Oh I don't know, you're the one that has been yelling at her!"

"Have not!"

"you just were like two seconds-"

you squeezed Tom's hand, unknowingly cutting off Jack and Tommy's argument as you spoke, "I don't know what it just said, but it sounded like laughing at the end."

Colby tilted his head, eyes furrowing, "laughing? why would she be laughing?"

'm not.

"What do you mean you're not?" Tom pestered, "You just did so-"

Him.

Toms's brow crinkled further, confusion settling into his expression.

"Him?" Sam asked, "Do you mean it's not Elspeth anymore?"

"Yeah, are we talking to someone else?"

your head quirked to the side, confused at the noise coming through the headphones, "It's like a bell?" you spoke, "Yeah like I hear a bell ringing."

"Oh!" Sam yelled, "Like ding ding, that's right!"

"Maybe"

"Who are you then? who are we speaking to?"

Bad.

"You're bad? Or is something here bad?"

Evil.

"What do you mean evil?"

The next.

Colby turned to Sam, realization dancing in his eyes, "The bishop's room. Thats our next stop, known to be a center for the demon-"

You yelped, tearing off the headphones when loud, evil laughter flooded your ears. You squeezed Tom's hand, yanking his arm to get a semi-awkward positioned hug from the boy.

"That sucked" you spoke, voice muffled by his sweatshirt.

"What happened?" he asked you, eyes wide and gaze quickly moving to each of the older guys in the group, attempting to calm you the best he can while freaking out himself.

"There was loud laughter." you explained, gesturing around our head, "it was like thousands of people all laughing all around my head."

Once again.... so very sorry for the shitty ending- I couldn't think of anything else to put...

#tommyinnit x reader #tommyinnit imagine #mcyt x reader #sam and colby imagine

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