widderwise

[widderwise]

Been reading @blackkatmagic’s as wild wings follow. I love the Mandalorian worldbuilding there, especially the funeral road and funerary field. And as one thought led to another…

I do think Mandalorians would be big on parades, actually. But they would think of them as ceremonial marches (along certain traditional or ceremonial routes/roads)—solemn occasions of reenacting/remembering past events, or carrying the deceased on their last march. So they’re not supposed to be displays of might and glory (although some certainly would have done that too, especially in the times of the Mandalorian empire).

As I understand it, reenactors have already adopted the practice. Clearly there’s something that resonates.

[widderwise]

Danny has been reincarnated.

Which was an odd thing to realize, it wasn't even a slow one he just... snapped into it one day. One moment he was staring at a wall out of boredom the next, well, he was staring for an entirely different reason.

It was a task for his now young -he thinks around three years old?- mind to work its way through the memories, but it wasn't like he had much else to do honestly. So, what does he know?

His name is Danny, like, his actual name and not just a moniker. He was once a halfa and he already knows he's going to be missing invisibility and intangibility. He, well, died. For like, a second time which actually makes sense because reincarnation-

Anyways.

He was a clone of two people from this thing called the Justice League which, weird name but probably some government or activist group. Wonder Woman and Superman. Which were pretty weird names to name your kids but eh.

He doesn't really remember much besides that from this life, or the one from before but he's an adult! He'll figure things out once he gets out of this containment tube thing.

Did he mention he was in a test tube? He's a tube baby now. He thinks? Or maybe it's more like he's being contained.

Whatever.

So he breaks out. Thank you apparent superstrength that he has no idea why he has but he's not going to complain! He then wandered around all of the other test tubes, able to remember just enough of English to see that yea, they're dead.

He probably was too, before he had memories zapped into him. Or a vegetable.

He then finds this really big container, checks it out, then opens it because the clone inside isn't dead!

'Project Match' it said. He'll just call him Match.

Was he thanked for helping him? Nope. You would think that he would be thanked or at least somewhat respected for saving this guy but nope!

He was, quite literally, held up by his leg and dangled in the air. Who dangles a three-year-old?! Well, he was technically and adult but still! The next few things were a blur but after pulling off the old Fenton charm he found him and Match outside as he tried to stop him from attacking random people.

Luckily the charms and privilege of the youngest (he's assuming he's the youngest, because he's physically three) was more than enough to get through to him. Sure, the guy couldn't form words, really aggressive for literally no reason, really weird but also absolutely cool looking eyes. But he worked around the first issue by developing their own personal language from like grunts and stuff, the second he once again used his youngest privilege to boss him around and the third a pair of sunglasses easily fixed.

He just had to steer Match clear of those random S crest mark thingies. Which was a weird thing to hate but hey, he's not there to judge.

[widderwise]

Dancing with the Devil #stobotnik

[widderwise]

DP X Marvel #11

Danny Fenton did not plan to be adopted by the Scarlet Witch. It wasn’t even on his list of top ten weirdest things that could happen in his afterlife. Then again, after falling through an interdimensional ghost rift and crash-landing into a cult ritual mid-WandaVision finale, Danny realized the universe hated him and this was its love language.

He’d barely had time to wipe the ectoplasm off his face before Wanda Maximoff locked eyes with him, levitated, and declared, “You poor haunted creature. You’re mine now.”

Danny blinked. “I—I what?”

She hugged him. Mid-air. While glowing. “Don’t worry, dragul meu. I’ll protect you.”

Danny, held like a traumatized kitten, tried to process the rapidly shifting situation. Somewhere, a witch disintegrated. A fake town crumbled. A grief-born reality collapsed. And Danny Fenton—half-dead teenager from Amity Park—accidentally became Wanda Maximoff’s emotional support poltergeist.

He didn’t even try to resist. It was honestly kind of nice.

Because unlike his real parents—who were actively trying to vivisect him for science—Wanda made him soup. Sokovian soup, no less. Which kind of tasted like regret and paprika. But it was warm. And for once, someone looked at him like he wasn’t a freak but something precious. Like a haunted doll or a cursed Fabergé egg.

She called him pet names in Sokovian. Îngeraș when he tried to sneak out at 2 a.m. to fight a ghost. Puiule when he accidentally exploded a toaster. Scumpul meu when he sobbed uncontrollably after seeing a “Family is Forever” sign at Target. It was the most love he’d ever gotten outside Jazz buying him discounted Halloween candy.

Speaking of Jazz.

Danny mentioned her once. Casually. Offhandedly. In the way someone might mention, oh, by the way, I have an older sister who looks like you but taller and with clinically concerning rage issues.

Wanda’s eyes lit up like she’d just been told kittens could talk. “You have a sister?”

“Yeah,” Danny said, eating a pierogi shaped like a ghost. “Her name’s Jasmine, but we call her Jazz. She’s super smart, real protective, and tried to fight my teacher once.”

Wanda stood. “We must get her.”

“Wait—what?”

“We’re getting your sister. My daughter.”

Danny didn’t know whether to be touched or terrified. But forty minutes and three death threats to the GIW later, Jazz Fenton was dragged through a portal and deposited into a reality-warped Sokovian living room, blinking and armed with a baseball bat.

Jazz, understandably, had questions.

Wanda just wrapped her in a shawl and gave her a plate of dumplings. “Welcome home, copilul meu.”

“Am I being kidnapped?” Jazz asked, eyes wild.

“Adopted,” Danny corrected. “It’s honestly an upgrade.”

Jazz accepted this surprisingly fast. It helped that Wanda let her redecorate the entire library, gave her free reign over a magic grimoire collection, and, perhaps most importantly, stabbed one of their shared enemies in the chest with a glowing dagger while humming a lullaby.

“I like her,” Jazz said, sipping tea made from herbs that maybe glowed.

Things escalated from there.

The next addition to the Maximoff Household of Misfit Ghostlings was Danielle—Dani for short—Danny’s chaotic, sticky-fingered clone who had been couch-surfing across dimensions since she ran away from Vlad Masters, Danny’s psychotic billionaire godfather and man-shaped midlife crisis.

Wanda met Dani after the girl tried to rob her of a magical artifact.

Instead of obliterating her, Wanda gave her a forehead kiss and said, “You steal like my brother when we were your age. Absolutely perfect.”

Dani burst into tears.

“I’m not a mistake?”

“You are a miracle.”

Danny watched this exchange with a bowl of popcorn. “This is insane.”

“You’re just mad she didn’t say you were a miracle,” Jazz muttered.

“I exploded her car once.”

“You turned it into sentient spaghetti.”

“It was a Tuesday!”

And then came Dan.

Alternate future version of Danny. Older. Meaner. With trauma so dense it had its own gravitational pull. He arrived via ghost vortex, mid-breakdown, screaming something about the end of all things.

Wanda calmly offered him a cup of rosehip tea and called him suflet pierdut. Lost soul.

Dan, raised on fire and suffering, had never been spoken to like that before. He agreed to stay for dinner and accidentally started crying into a bowl of goulash.

Now, technically, the timeline said Wanda should have vaporized him. Dan had, after all, committed multiversal crimes and tried to erase existence. But instead, she put a red scarf around his neck and declared, “You’re clearly just misunderstood.”

“He killed his entire universe,” Danny pointed out.

“Everyone deserves a second chance,” Wanda replied, feeding Dan a pastry like a wounded war veteran.

Dan became her second favorite.

“This isn’t fair!” Danny protested.

“You were less traumatized than him. He needs me more care.” Wanda said.

Danny sulked for three days.

It was around this point that Wanda decided paperwork was for cowards and declared all four of them legally Maximoffs. No documentation. No court. Just raw magical energy, ancient Sokovian rites, and an extremely intense group hug.

“From now on, you are my children. We are going to fix everything.” Wanda said.

By everything, she meant their deadbeat parents. Jack and Maddie Fenton tried to sue for custody. Wanda turned their lawyer into a tree.

“I will kill them,” she muttered, eyes glowing red.

Jazz had to talk her down using a whiteboard, a magic inhibitor, and a pie chart labeled “Fenton Emotional Neglect: 200%.”

Then came Vlad Masters.

He tried to get Dani back by showing up in a giant mech suit made of ghost goo and Apple Watches. Wanda incinerated him with a look and then cursed his bloodline to sneeze every time someone said the word “plasma.”

“He’ll never know peace again,” she said sweetly, spooning paprika stew into Dani’s mouth.

The GIW, naturally, got involved. Tried to declare Danny a weapon of mass destruction. Wanda made their building and people disappear. Not explode. Not collapse. Just—gone. Like they never existed.

Danny laughed so hard he passed out.

The Avengers had questions.

Strange came to investigate. He left with a black eye and a sense of foreboding. Wong stayed for dinner and gave Jazz his number.

Sam Wilson tried to talk to Danny about “superhero responsibility.” Danny dragged him into a ghost fight and said, “Cool. Let’s see you responsibility your way out of that.”

Eventually, the Maximoff household functioned like a chaotic sitcom.

Wanda would be floating upside down while teaching Dani hex theory. Jazz would be dissecting the latest government conspiracy in a conspiracy-board-filled sunroom. Dan would be brooding in a velvet cloak like a rejected Dracula. Danny would be stuck in a ceiling fan.

“Family dinner!” Wanda called one night.

“We’re in the middle of a ghost invasion!” Danny shouted, firing a thermos at a skeletal goblin.

“You can’t save the world on an empty stomach!”

They ate around a magically reinforced table, surrounded by summoned protective wards, and discussed whether or not to curse Danny’s English teacher with mild diarrhea.

It was perfect.

It was dysfunctional.

It was home.

Wanda made them all matching red sweaters with little “M”s on them. Dan refused to wear his until she got that look in her eyes, and then he wore it for three weeks straight.

Sometimes, Wanda would look at them with a strange, soft expression. Like they were her salvation.

“You saved me,” she told Danny once, brushing his white hair back.

“I fell on your lawn during a reality collapse.”

“Exactly. My savior.”

Danny smiled. Because honestly? Maybe she was right.

She gave them love. Stability. Curses. A home with infinite rooms and zero vivisections.

And in return?

They gave her family. A real one. Weird. Dead. Half-dead. Emotionally unhinged. But hers.

Wanda Maximoff had lost everything.

And then the universe, in its cosmic chaos, dropped four glowing, traumatized, half-ghost disasters into her arms.

She cradled them like stars.

And this time, she didn’t lose them.

Because if anyone tried to take her children?

She would burn the multiverse to the ground.

[widderwise]

DP X Marvel #19

Pepper Potts prided herself on her ability to adapt. She’d survived Tony Stark’s post-cave existentialism, Stark Expo 2010, the entirety of the Avengers Initiative, and several global cataclysms. But nothing—absolutely nothing—prepared her for the day she received a glowing scroll via flaming raven at 3 a.m. It exploded into glitter and legal jargon the second she touched it.

The Temporal Child Reassignment Authority—TCRA for short, like an IRS from hell with better penmanship—had declared her the legal guardian of four de-aged minors, all results of an “interdimensional ghost war and subsequent reality collapse.” The document even included a family tree, pointing out her half-sister Maddie Fenton as their maternal parent. The kicker? Three of the children were meta-class ecto-beings. And the fourth was an “anomalous prodigy with cognitive potential exceeding known human thresholds.”

Pepper blinked at the words, reread them, and poured herself the strongest wine she owned.

By the time she finished the bottle, her living room shimmered with unnatural frost, and a swirling green portal opened with the subtlety of a chainsaw. Out stumbled four children—if one could use such a soft word for what appeared to be three weapons of mass destruction and a tiny, furious psychologist in the making.

Jazz was nine years old, with blazing red hair in a ponytail so tight it looked like a weapon. Her eyes scanned the room with military precision. She was holding a notebook, already scribbling down assessments.

Dan, aged seven, had black-and-white hair that flickered between forms, red eyes glowing faintly, and a permanent scowl that screamed war criminal in a booster seat. His tiny boot crushed a Stark Industries coaster underfoot.

Danny, five, looked like an overcaffeinated sugar cube in a “Ghostbusters are Bigots” shirt. He levitated six inches off the ground, phasing through the coffee table like it offended him personally.

And Dani—dear sweet baby Dani—was three, wore a tutu over her jumpsuit, and was gnawing on a Stark tech screwdriver like a teething raptor. It sparked. She giggled.

Pepper stared.

Tony wandered in wearing Iron Man pajama pants and blinked at the chaos.

“Huh. Why do I suddenly feel like a dad?”

Pepper stood up and handed him the scroll.

Ten minutes later, Tony was grinning like a proud, chaotic uncle who just realized he’d inherited a feral army. “Oh, I love them.”

“I want to kill Maddie,” Pepper muttered. “I want to re-kill her if she’s already dead. I don’t care. I will unearth her soul and yell.”

Jazz looked up from her notes. “Statistically, yelling is ineffective when dealing with narcissistic sociopaths with academic degrees. But I can write up an interrogation protocol if you give me twenty minutes and a war room.”

Tony looked at her like she was a gift from God. “Pepper. She’s a baby you.”

“She’s a terrifying baby me.”

“I love her.”

Dan crossed his arms, floating ominously. “I’m only here because they said I can’t go back to the timeline where I killed everyone.”

Dani beamed. “I like juice!”

Danny phased up to the ceiling fan. “Does this house have ghost-repellent death lasers like the last one? I hate those.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “You got hit by ghost-repellent death lasers?”

Pepper was already dialing every Avenger in existence. “Tony. Tony, their parents worked with the GIW.”

“The what?”

Jazz narrowed her eyes. “The Ghost Investigation Ward. They are basically interdimensional fascists who want to wipe out all ghosts and hybrid anomalies. Also, they tried to vivisect us.”

Tony blinked. “Vivisect?”

“Scalpels, restraints, anti-ecto shackles, and a man named Agent O who smells like ham and crime,” Jazz said flatly.

“I’m going to kill someone,” Pepper muttered, pacing. “I’m going to launch an HR-approved war.”

Dani blinked. “Are we allowed to bite?”

“No,” Pepper said.

“Yes,” Tony said at the same time.

Dani cheered.

By the time Natasha arrived, Dani was in the air vents, Danny had short-circuited the AI, Dan was brooding in the fireplace like a Dickensian ghost of vengeance, and Jazz was lecturing FRIDAY on ethical protocol failure.

Natasha stood in the entryway, staring, her eyes wide with either horror or admiration.

“Pepper. Did you birth little Widows?”

“No,” Pepper said tightly. “They’re Maddie’s kids. Maddie’s. As in, I share DNA with them and now legally own them. Apparently.”

Jazz tilted her head. “Ms. Romanoff. I’ve analyzed your fight patterns from Battle of New York and determined you have unresolved trauma related to institutional betrayal. Would you like to unpack that?”

Tony leaned over. “She’s nine.”

“She scares me,” Natasha whispered.

Bucky showed up next and read the full report Jazz had printed out for him, complete with footnotes, photos, and color-coded trauma timelines.

The super soldier sat down, dead-eyed. “I just had a Hydra flashback from a PowerPoint.”

Jazz gave him a lollipop. “That’s a common symptom. I recommend candy and validation.”

Dan muttered something about weak mortals and floated upside down through a wall.

“I like him,” Bucky said faintly.

Steve walked in, saw Dan breathing ectoplasmic fire at the neighbor’s cat, and noped back out.

Wanda arrived and blinked at Jazz, whose psychic aura flared like a dying star every time she got emotional.

They stared at each other for a long time.

“I sense wrath,” Wanda said.

Jazz nodded. “I contain multitudes.”

Pepper was halfway through arranging a legal drone strike on the GIW when Rhodey FaceTimed her. “Hey, uh, why is CNN reporting that four tiny gods have occupied New York and turned the Stark Tower into a haunted war bunker?”

“They’re children,” Pepper said.

Tony poked his head into frame. “Children who can melt tanks.”

Danny flew by holding the Iron Man helmet upside down like a bowl of cereal.

“Dani just set the couch on fire,” Pepper added, dead-eyed.

Rhodey blinked. “I’ll bring extinguishers.”

The thing about children, Pepper had learned, is that they operate entirely on vibes, sugar, and trauma. And these four had plenty of all three. Jazz was terrifyingly competent, and within a week had formed an inter-Avengers child committee, wrote a new AI ethics guideline, and had Bruce Banner signing waivers just to talk to her.

Dan blew up a parking meter because it “looked at him wrong.”

Danny asked Tony if they could build an ecto-bazooka together and promised not to use it on Steve “unless Steve said ghosts weren’t real again.”

Dani tried to use her powers to possess a Roomba and ride it into battle.

Pepper walked in on all four of them forming a pact to “annihilate GIW headquarters” with something called Operation Ghost Buster Buster.

Tony approved instantly.

Pepper did not.

“Pepper,” Tony said. “We have kids now.”

“We have war orphans now.”

“They’re adorable!”

“They’re armed.”

“They’re basically Avengers Junior.”

Dani crashed through the ceiling riding a ghost dragon she “found in the laundry room.”

“I changed my mind,” Pepper muttered. “They’re perfect.”

Pepper flew to Amity Park a week later, dressed in corporate armor and rage. She walked into the Fenton household with Natasha, Bucky, and a glowing legal team of literal demons (Tony’s idea) and found Maddie and Jack cheerfully explaining how ecto-dissection worked on “halflings.”

When Maddie smiled and said, “It’s science, dear,” Pepper threw her coffee in Maddie’s face.

Tony had to hold her back while Bucky dismantled the Fenton portal and Natasha found enough surveillance footage to convict them of several counts of attempted child murder.

Jazz watched the entire thing from the jet via livestream, calmly taking notes.

“Pepper’s my favorite aunt,” she said.

Dan nodded. “She has potential.”

Danny was asleep on Tony’s shoulder, clutching a ghost plushie.

Dani was drawing herself riding a unicorn with a flame thrower.

The Avengers voted unanimously to make the kids honorary members. Jazz requested clearance access to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s trauma archives and got it. Dan received therapy. Danny built a ghost-safe treehouse. Dani declared herself queen of the Stark kitchen and banned kale.

Pepper watched them play in the yard one day and finally exhaled.

“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” she whispered.

Tony grinned. “You’re doing fine.”

Jazz ran by wielding a dagger made of solidified ghost energy.

Danny chased her screaming something about shared custody of the Lunchables.

Dan floated overhead like a sullen storm cloud.

Dani cackled, flying past them on her Roomba dragon.

“I need wine,” Pepper muttered.

Tony kissed her cheek. “I’ll buy you a vineyard.”

[widderwise]

The Council of the Dead Would Like to Inform the Justice League that “Magical Girl” is a Gender-Neutral Term 16.2.23

DP x DC. Danny, Dani, Dan, Vlad, Clockwork, the Justice League. Redeemed Vlad, redeemed Dan, Ghost King Danny.

Amity gets suddenly transported to the DC universe, but that doesn’t mean anybody realizes it suddenly exists. Amity was already extremely liminal and under an information blackout, and both those things stay true making it really hard to think about for anybody that doesn’t already know about it.

Just be DC hasn’t noticed Amity does not mean Amity hasn’t noticed DC, which is why Danny is out exploring this world that’s absolutely full of heroes.

Unfortunately, DC is even more full of disasters, and he’s forced to transform to protect some people. He books it out of there immediately afterward and disappears.

Everyone assumes he’s a magical girl. A black-haired blue-eyed “civilian” had a whole freaking transformation, fixed everything with magic, and flew away. Was he Tim Drake? Related to the Superboys? A random teen? One of Bruce Wayne’s other children? No-ones ever seen a hero with a transformation before.

Danny finds out about this and is more than willing to play along.

He can make his transformation more dramatic, :) he can design some special attacks, :) Clockwork can he use a time medallion as a boost item?* (Clockwork says yes.) :D

With Vlad, Dani, and Dan playing along too they even have a pretty decent magical girl team, complete with Vlad playing the dark horse magical girl rival whose more rude and abrasive but ultimately on the same side for bonus Justice League trolling.

The Justice League is absolutely loosing their minds apparently living through a Magical Girl anime. Especially after threats from the Infinite Realms start getting involved.

*The ultimate boost item is, of course, the Crown of Fire.

Dani, Danny, and Dan introduce themselves as half-siblings. For the pun.

Day (626/100) in my #∞daysofwriting @the-wip-project 16th of Feb

[widderwise]

DP X Marvel #26

Danny didn’t really think it through. In his defense, there weren’t a lot of guidebooks titled “How to Deal with the Psychotic Future Version of Yourself You Accidentally Redeemed But Are Still Terrified Of.” Jazz suggested therapy. Sam suggested containment. Tucker suggested launching him into deep space. Danny, brilliant and seventeen and sleep-deprived after three days of babysitting a now mostly-reformed Dan Phantom, decided, “Screw it,” ripped open a portal to another dimension, and told him to “go make friends.” Dan grinned, sharp-toothed and wicked, and without hesitation dove through the swirling green and blue mass of unstable ectoplasmic energy.

Thus began the Marvel Universe’s greatest headache.

The first incident happened barely four hours after Dan’s arrival. New York woke up to a brand new urban legend: a demon with burning blue eyes and silver-streaked black hair beating the living shit out of Shocker in the middle of Times Square. People recorded it, of course. Viral videos showed Shocker screaming, running, trying desperately to aim his gauntlets while Dan literally phased through every attack like he was swatting a mosquito. Somewhere in the footage, Dan shouted, “C’MON, MAN! HIT HARDER, YOU’RE EMBARRASSING YOURSELF!” before drop-kicking Shocker into a halal cart.

The Avengers noticed. Specifically, Spider-Man noticed, because Peter Parker had never been so personally offended by something in his life.

“He’s stealing my bit,” Peter whined to MJ later, scrolling through TikTok and watching the mysterious “Blue Devil” bodyslam the Rhino into a GAP storefront. “That’s MY thing. Wisecracking and beating up guys in animal costumes.”

MJ, deadpan as ever, didn’t even look up from her book. “Maybe if you hit the gym once in a while, you could still compete.”

Elsewhere, S.H.I.E.L.D. was losing their collective shit.

Nick Fury reviewed the footage with the grim severity of a man preparing for war. “I want every available agent tailing him. Find out what he is, what he wants, and for God’s sake, do not engage.”

Unfortunately, Dan had other plans. He wanted engagement. Constant, chaotic, no-holds-barred engagement.

When the X-Men tried to approach him peacefully—because, to be fair, a floating, smirking, six-foot-seven superpowered anomaly screamed “mutant”—Dan responded by challenging Wolverine to a fistfight in the middle of Central Park.

“You smell angry,” Dan said, cracking his knuckles and grinning wide. “I like that. C’mon, Knives. Show me what those claws can do.”

Wolverine, never one to back down from a challenge, growled and immediately lunged. It took six X-Men to pull them apart. Logan was half in love and half homicidal.

Jean Grey, massaging her temples afterward, sighed, “He’s not a mutant. He’s something else. Something… worse.”

Meanwhile, Dan wasn’t picky about his opponents. Hero? Villain? Civilian? If you looked at him wrong, he was ready to throw hands. He got into a screaming match with Daredevil over a parking spot. He suplexed Deadpool into a dumpster for calling him “Discount Nightcrawler.” He made Venom cry after a fifteen-minute insult match that Eddie Brock would never fully recover from.

The Fantastic Four tried to reason with him.

“We can help you,” Reed Richards said, voice patient like he was talking to a rabid cat. “We have resources—”

Dan blew up the top three floors of the Baxter Building and left a sticky note on the ruins that said, “UR WELCOME - D.”

The thing was, Dan wasn’t evil anymore. Not really. He wasn’t trying to take over the world. He wasn’t murdering anyone. He just had a lifetime’s worth of rage, grief, and unresolved abandonment issues—and no idea what to do with them except get into constant, escalating, deeply unnecessary fights.

It got to a point where the heroes started treating Dan like a natural disaster.

“Code Blue,” a harried S.H.I.E.L.D. agent barked over comms one afternoon. “I repeat, Code Blue! The entity is currently body-slamming Juggernaut through Grand Central!”

Cap sighed, already pulling on his shield. “Alright, team. Let’s move out.”

Black Widow holstered her guns. “At least it’s not another alien invasion.”

Thor, cheerful as ever, grinned. “I relish a good battle!”

Hawkeye muttered, “You relish being concussed.”

Dan, for his part, loved the attention. He loved the chaos. He loved the feeling of letting loose in a world that could actually handle him, where nobody flinched when he punched through a concrete wall or melted a tank with a blast of pure ectoplasmic fire.

He was happy, in his deeply deranged, borderline-psychotic way.

That didn’t mean he was easy to deal with.

After Dan singlehandedly wrecked a Hydra base (“I was bored, okay?” he said when the Avengers confronted him), Tony Stark decided to try a different tactic.

“Look, Big and Blue,” Tony said, lounging on the ruined remains of what was once a cutting-edge jet. “Ever think about channeling that rage into something… productive? Like, say, joining the Avengers?”

Dan blinked, actually considering it for a full five seconds.

Then he laughed so hard he almost dropped a car on Tony’s head.

“Me? Work with you guys? Under orders? Are you high, Tin Man?”

Steve Rogers, exhausted and already developing a migraine, tried. “You could do a lot of good—”

“I am doing good,” Dan said brightly. “I’m keeping you on your toes. No need to thank me.”

“You broke Clint’s arm last week,” Natasha reminded him.

“He’ll live.”

“He was trying to give you a granola bar.”

Dan shrugged, utterly unbothered. “He looked suspicious.”

The closest thing Dan had to a friend was Deadpool. Not because they got along—they didn’t, not even a little—but because Deadpool was the only one insane enough to keep up.

They had a rivalry. A bloody, chaotic, absolutely incomprehensible rivalry that involved prank wars, bar fights, and one extremely regrettable karaoke contest that left three bars in ruins and a citywide ban on musical gatherings involving either party.

“I hate you,” Dan snarled once, pinning Deadpool to a wall after a four-hour chase across Manhattan.

“I hate you more!” Wade screeched back, thrilled beyond belief.

“Great! Friends forever!” Wade cackled.

Dan screamed into the void.

Meanwhile, Danny Fenton was back in his own dimension, blissfully unaware, telling Jazz, “See? Everything’s fine.”

Jazz, reading a news article titled “Unknown Supernatural Entity Causes $3 Billion in Property Damage, Punches Doctor Doom in the Face” quietly considered strangling him.

Eventually, the heroes adapted. Dan was like bad weather. You prepared for him. You kept an eye out for ominous blue clouds and spontaneous outbreaks of screaming. Sometimes he helped. Sometimes he made things worse. Mostly, he made things interesting.

There were even betting pools.

“Fifty bucks says he crashes this gala,” Sam Wilson said, tightening his bowtie before a high-profile Avengers event.

“Hundred says he wears a suit to crash it,” Bucky Barnes added, deadpan.

“Two hundred he punches Tony before dessert,” Carol Danvers said, sipping champagne.

Dan did crash the gala. In a tuxedo.

He punched Tony before the entrees even made it out.

By then, nobody was even surprised.

The turning point came when Galactus tried to devour Earth (again). The heroes mobilized. Big stakes. High drama. Apocalyptic dread.

Dan showed up in the middle of the chaos, lazily floating beside Captain Marvel.

“Hey,” he said, tilting his head at the giant cosmic entity looming in the sky. “I’m gonna punch that.”

Carol, blinking, said, “You can’t just punch Galactus.”

Dan, already cracking his knuckles, grinned. “Watch me.”

And then he did.

Nobody knew how. It defied physics, logic, and every law of reality. But somehow, Dan punched Galactus so hard the giant stumbled, clutched his jaw, and left.

There was a beat of stunned silence.

Deadpool clapped. “THAT’S MY BEST ENEMY!”

Thor dropped his hammer.

Tony sat down on the ground and decided to reconsider all his life choices.

Steve very seriously said, “We are never letting him leave.”

Thus, against all odds, Dan Phantom—the violent, chaotic, semi-redeemed ghost of a now-erased dystopian future—became an honorary Avenger much to his own dismay.

He didn’t exactly follow rules. He certainly didn’t behave. But when Thanos invaded three months later and Dan showed up by suplexing a Leviathan out of the sky and riding it into battle like a demented cowboy, nobody complained.

Well. Except the Leviathan.

In the end, Danny was right.

Everything was fine.

If your definition of “fine” included a psychotic ghost terrorizing both heroes and villains equally, destabilizing multiple governments, and becoming a beloved menace.

But hey. Could be worse.

At least he wasn’t totally evil anymore.

[widderwise]

Sleepy star

a new star recently appeared in the solar system, it was very VERY tiny, heck even tinier than the moon! And yet it shone as if it was a million light years away when in reality its floating around the earth like a moon! Our heroes decide to investigate this strange celestial body only to find out its a freaking sleeping teenager!?

This can be a dcxdp or dpxmarvel crossover and the sleeping teen can be Dani or Danny!

I wanna read chaos so tag me if this is used!

[widderwise]

DP X Marvel #8

By day, Danny Fenton was Midtown High’s hottest disaster. He was the Stark STEM Scholar—one of only three in the country—famously discovered after winning some obscure international quantum physics competition at age sixteen and allegedly giving a presentation that made Tony Stark laugh, cry, and threaten to adopt him in the same breath.

The problem was that Danny had no clue he was hot.

Like, he genuinely didn’t know. He thought people stared at him because of his weird vibe or maybe because he once muttered “parallel dimension colonoscopy” during a psych quiz and the rumor never died. He figured the occasional lingering looks were because people thought he was gonna go feral and try to bite someone (which was fair). He wore hoodies three sizes too big, drank energy drinks like water, mumbled through conversations, and ducked away from people like a scared little gremlin.

Meanwhile, the rest of Midtown was losing its mind over him.

In particular Peter Parker was losing his goddamn mind over him.

It started innocent enough. Peter had just been minding his business, doing his whole friendly-neighborhood-academically-overachieving schtick, when in walked him—Danny Fenton, with a bag slung over his shoulder, silver earrings glinting in the light like a warning sign (courtesy of Sam, who declared, “If you’re gonna be mysterious and broody, at least be aesthetically consistent.”) His hoodie looked like it had a body count. His cheekbones could slice vibranium. His eyes were dead, like truly void-of-soul dead, and Peter’s first thought wasn’t even “oh, new kid.” It was “I want him to step on me.”

Peter, poor, unsuspecting Peter, had his first-ever sexual panic as Danny plopped down in the seat next to Peter and promptly fell asleep face-first on the desk with a muttered, “If I die during lecture, bury me in a black hole.”

He was in real time was realizing he was a bisexual disaster. Danny didn’t notice. Because of course he didn’t. He just blinked at Peter like he couldn’t tell if he was real, offered a crooked half-smile, and then walked away like he hadn’t just lit Peter’s soul on fire and then pissed on the ashes.

Every day since had been a goddamn trial.

Peter had spent the first week internally screaming.

The second week, he started writing hate poetry. By the third, he was doodling “P. Parker-Fenton” in the corners of his calculus notes like a 12-year-old girl.

“Dude,” Ned had said, catching him mid-sketch. “You’re literally Spider-Man. Act like it.”

Peter flipped him off with the enthusiasm of someone spiraling.

See, Danny was not just hot. He was dangerously hot. Apocalyptically hot. End-of-days, angels-weeping-in-the-streets hot. But it was more than that—Danny had this vibe, like he could kill you or cry on you or accidentally invent interdimensional travel with a paperclip and a Diet Coke. He muttered equations under his breath, got into passive-aggressive debates with teachers, and once fixed the lab’s particle accelerator by kicking it.

And Peter couldn’t look away. Not that he was the only one.

The kicker, the absolute cherry on top of the chaos sundae? Everyone thought Danny and Black Cat had dated. The way Danny would scowl, rant, and complain like he was personally offended by Black Cat’s existence? Peak scorned lover energy.

“He thinks he’s slick, but he’s just a glorified stripper with daddy issues and too many backflips,” Danny once said in class and the teacher had to excuse herself.

“I swear I’m gonna develop a neurotoxin specifically to neutralize dumbass vigilantes with cat kinks,”

Everyone assumed Black Cat dumped him.

Peter, in his infinite genius, thought: oh my god, Danny’s still not over him.

Peter had almost passed out. Because here was the thing: he was Spider-Man. And Black Cat was his worst problem since midterms. He had arrived like a menace out of hell and a bisexual’s fever dream: black skintight tech suit (developed by who-the-fuck-knows), long white hair, with a domino mask and toxic green eyes, and with an ass so perfect Peter couldn’t even swing straight half the time.

Seriously. There’d be villains throwing grenades, and Peter would be getting motorboated by thighs. There was groping. There was flirting. There was one time Black Cat bit his ear and whispered, “Miss me, pretty boy?” and Peter crashed into a billboard.

He’d tried everything. He webbed Black Cat’s legs. Black Cat purred and called him “kinky.” He yelled. Black Cat called it “foreplay.” He threatened to arrest him. Black Cat licked his cheek and said, “Book me, officer.”

Peter had screamed into his pillow for three hours.

It wasn’t even just the flirting. Black Cat had the most obscene agility Peter had ever seen. He moved like he was born in zero gravity. Feline, fluid, and just a little too dramatic, like he knew exactly how good he looked vaulting off rooftops with his ass perfectly lit by the moonlight.

Peter hated him.

He also maybe wanted to kiss him until his lungs gave out.

Worse yet? Peter was starting to like the bastard. His timing was always perfect. His gadgets were weirdly high-tech. He had a talent for saving people and then disappearing with a little salute and a wink that made Peter’s skin itch.

And then there was that kiss.

One week ago. Midtown Bank. Hostage situation. They cleared the building together, Peter bleeding, dazed, and vibrating with adrenaline.

Black Cat had grabbed his face—grabbed his face—and said, “You’re my favorite arachnid, you know that?” and kissed him full on the mouth, through the mask.

Peter hadn’t spoken a full sentence since.

Meanwhile, Danny was in class the next day, legs crossed, sipping a disgusting Monster-Latte hybrid, and saying, “What kind of vigilante triple flips over a fire hydrant for no reason? Just run, you overdramatic bastard.”

Peter, in a cold sweat, nodded and said “yeah totally” in the voice of someone whose soul had left his body.

And Danny. Danny had no idea.

Because Danny was the goddamn Black Cat.

He hadn’t meant to become a vigilante again. The plan had been normalcy. New town, new school, no more ghost crap. He was gonna do his best, keep his grades up, pretend he was just some regular nerd with caffeine addiction and unresolved trauma.

Then a ghost tried to possess the mayor.

So. Yeah.

Ghosts were still following him. And New York didn’t have a Phantom. It had Spider-Man, sure, but Spider-Man didn’t fight intangible poltergeists or ancient Babylonian curses riding the 6 train.

Danny had no choice.

He did not name himself. He wanted to be called Specter. Or Eclipse. Something cool and ominous.

But no. Someone caught a blurry photo of his suit and labeled it Black Cat, and the media ran with it. Because of course they did.

“What part of me says feline?!” Danny groaned, head in his hands.

“You land on your feet,” Jazz offered.

“You hissed at a reporter once,” Sam added.

“Your thighs jiggle like a cat when you run,” Tucker said while texting.

“Fuck it,” he muttered, peeling into his skin-tight tech suit. “Let’s lean into the bit.”

He redesigned his suit. Added some claws. Built in some stealth mods. Accidentally made it a little too form-fitting. Like. A lot. And took notes from DC comics’ Selina Kyle’s Catwoman.

Jazz called it pornographic. Sam said it was camp. Tucker just sent a picture of the suit’s ass shot and wrote “God is testing me.”

But it worked. People were scared of him. Or thirsty. Usually both. And if Spider-Man wanted to play, then Danny was gonna play.

He didn’t expect Spider-Man to be this hot, though.

Danny had zero intentions of flirting with him at first. But then Spider-Man showed up with that stupid voice, that stupid righteous attitude, that stupid perfect thighs, and Danny’s brain short-circuited. The sarcasm kicked in. The smirks. The shameless groping.

And then he kissed him. Because why not? No one would know.

Except now he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Spider-Man’s breath had hitched. His hands had clutched Danny’s suit like he didn’t want to let go. His knees almost gave out. Danny had felt it.

And now he was spiraling.

Because, uh. He was also kind of in love with Peter Parker. Like. A lot. The boy was brilliant, funny, painfully kind, and so pretty it gave Danny a stomach ache. But Danny couldn’t flirt with Peter because he was Black Cat, and he couldn’t flirt with Spider-Man because he was Danny.

His life was a joke.

Because Danny had no clue. About anything.

He didn’t know Peter was Spider-Man. He didn’t know Peter was spiraling into an identity meltdown because the boy he lowkey flirted with in calc was also the boy he highkey flirted with on rooftops. He didn’t know Peter was fantasizing about both of him like some bisexual train wreck with a death wish.

While for Peter? He didn’t know what he wanted more—Danny, or Black Cat.

The nerd with the hoodie and the caffeine addiction, who muttered to himself in code and looked at equations like they personally offended him? Or the cocky, sleek, thigh-baring menace who called him “pretty boy” and kissed him mid-battle just to watch him panic?

Peter was going insane.

Every time Black Cat landed in front of him, Peter had to actively fight the urge to sniff him like a lunatic. Every time Danny leaned over his desk to scribble notes, Peter’s soul left his body.

There was no winning.

“Someday,” Danny said one night, sitting on a rooftop as Black Cat and watching the skyline, “You are gonna figure it out.”

“Figure what out?” Peter as Spider-Man said, trying not to look directly at him.

“That I’m everything you want,” Danny purred, leaning into his space. “Hot, flexible, an emotional disaster.”

“You’re—! You’re insufferable.”

“I’m irresistible.”

Peter didn’t reply. He just screamed into the void later that night, face-planted into his pillow, and prayed for mercy.

The universe, as always, ignored him.

It all started at the Stark Foundation Fall Gala. A black-tie, red-carpet, industry-defining, media-covered event hosted in the glass spire that was Stark Tower, attended by the world’s smartest people and most insufferable billionaires—and two absolute disasters masquerading as teenage geniuses.

Danny Fenton, Stark STEM Scholar and walking espresso machine, was there because Tony Stark had personally invited him (“You’re legally required to be my prodigy now, kid, don’t argue, you signed the scholarship, it’s in the fine print”), and Peter Parker was there because he was Tony’s favorite intern, which meant “emotional support goblin” and “get me coffee, Peter” in the same breath.

Danny walked in like he’d been dragged from his apartment ten minutes before the event by the ghost of Coco Chanel—because he had. Sam had done his hair, shoved him into a black velvet suit that hugged his ass and thighs a little too perfectly, slapped silver rings on all his fingers, smokey eyeliner, and threatened him with a haunted curling iron if he so much as slouched.

Peter, meanwhile, had been hyperventilating in the bathroom for fifteen minutes.

He was wearing Armani. He had been forcibly styled by Pepper Potts herself, who had told him, “If you’re going to be Tony’s emotional support intern, you need to at least look like you’re not feral.” Peter had not emotionally recovered from being spritzed with Tom Ford cologne and told he looked “delicious.”

They spotted each other across the room like the first five minutes of a YA adaptation, except one was drinking something radioactive-green from a champagne flute and the other was clutching a tray of hors d’oeuvres like a weapon.

Danny blinked. Peter blinked.

Then they both looked away so fast they might’ve given themselves whiplash.

Which would’ve been fine if that was the end of it.

But no. God had other plans.

Specifically: Tony Stark’s plans.

“Come here,” Tony hissed, grabbing both of them by the shoulders. “You two teenage disasters are going to schmooze.”

“Tony I can’t schmooze,” Danny said, panicking. “I don’t even know what schmooze means, I thought that was a cheese—”

“And I have shrimp hands!” Peter added wildly, holding up his fingers still greasy from crab rangoons. “I can’t touch people like this! I’ll be arrested!”

Tony shoved them both forward like a mother bird kicking her children out of the nest and said, “Go. Talk. Mingle. Be charming. Or I’ll adopt you both and make you brothers and then who’s crushing on who, huh?”

“WHAT—” both of them said at once, violently red in the face.

“Bye!” Tony sang, disappearing into the crowd like a chaos goblin.

Peter and Danny stood in mortified silence for a full ten seconds.

Then:

“So,” Peter said. “Uh. You look… good.”

“Thanks,” Danny muttered, tugging at his collar. “I feel like a sexy baked potato.”

“You—what.”

“Just… overheated and wrapped in velvet.”

Peter wheezed.

They started talking. Somehow it spiraled into quantum entropy, the ethics of ghost containment, and whether Tony Stark was legally allowed to name a drone “Bitch Lasagna 3.0.”

Peter was sweating. Danny was internally combusting. They were both about five seconds from proposing marriage and didn’t know it yet.

Then came the moment.

A scream. A crash.

Glass shattered. Lights flickered.

“Fucking hell,” Danny muttered, already pulling off his jacket. “Can’t have ONE normal night.”

Peter, across from him, had already vanished.

Two minutes later, Spider-Man somersaulted through the crowd and launched himself at the glowing, oozing, screaming ghost that had torn through the ceiling.

Black Cat flipped down from the opposite direction, landing like a goddamn supermodel in latex.

The crowd screamed.

Peter screamed internally.

Black Cat smirked. “Miss me, pretty boy?”

“I don’t—this is a GALA, can we not?” Spider-Man groaned, dodging ectoplasmic debris.

Black Cat laughed, cartwheeled up a wall, and started firing anti-ghost rounds from his wrist mods. The ghost shrieked. Spider-Man nearly got crushed. Black Cat saved him by grabbing his waist and yeeting them both through a portal that landed them right in—

—the rooftop garden.

Panting. Sweaty. Disheveled.

“What the FUCK was that?!” Spider-Man gasped lifting up his mask slightly from the bottom to breath.

“I didn’t summon it!” Black Cat snapped, wiping green sludge off his face. “Ghosts have no concept of social etiquette!”

Danny after wiping his face realized his domino mask fell off but it was too late to cover up again.

Peter stared at Danny’s very familiar stupidly hot face.

Danny stared at Peter’s very familiar stupidly kissable mouth.

Peter said, in a high-pitched, cracked whisper, “You’re Black Cat?!”

Danny shrieked, “YOU’RE SPIDER-MAN?!”

They both screamed at each other. Like. Loud. Very. Loudly.

Birds flew off the rooftop.

Somewhere inside the gala, a waiter dropped an entire tray of champagne flutes from sheer sympathetic psychic resonance.

“YOU—YOU’VE BEEN FLIRTING WITH ME AS A VILLAIN!” Peter yelled.

“YOU KISSED ME ON A ROOFTOP AND THEN IGNORED ME IN CALC!”

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE!”

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE STRAIGHT!”

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE BLACK CAT’s EX!”

“I AM BLACK CAT!”

Peter made a noise like a microwave about to explode. “OH MY GOD. I’M IN LOVE WITH TWO PEOPLE WHO ARE ACTUALLY THE SAME PERSON.”

Danny staggered back. “I—I’m in love with YOU! But I couldn’t SAY ANYTHING because you were Spider-Man and I was Black Cat and we were ENEMIES WITH BENEFITS—”

“BENEFITS? I GOT TRAUMA.”

“I KISSED YOU! WITH TONGUE!”

“YEAH AND IT WAS AWESOME WHICH MAKES THIS WORSE!”

They both fell silent. Hyperventilating.

Danny doubled over and screamed into the floor.

Peter clutched a potted plant and whispered, “This is a hate crime.”

There was a pause.

“…You like me?” Danny asked.

“You like me?” Peter countered.

They stared.

Then they both shrieked again, because this was TOO MUCH and NEITHER of them was equipped emotionally to handle anything.

And across the rooftop, where no one had noticed, Tony Stark was standing behind a pillar, filming the whole thing.

He grinned.

“I’m gonna play this at your wedding,” he whispered to himself, tearfully, joyfully. “God, I love being me.”

[widderwise]

Give me a GK Danny Phantom who can hear every soul under his reign when they're in pain.

Give me a GK Danny who has to abandon his school, his home, his friends, his dimension, to save them all.

Give me a GK Danny who flies from one emergency to another, because he cannot for the half-life of him leave a single soul to suffer.

Give me a GK Danny who starts to lose his sense of self to protect. Uses the Ring of Rage and the Crown of Fire to burn down and destroy any and every institute that would keep his people from safety.

Give me a GK Danny who gives into the rage, not to be a tyrant, but to protect everything that's his.

A GK Danny who blasts through walls and borders and sigils and spells to gather every last shade and blob and only stops to assure them that he's got them and he'll save them before disappearing with the spirit.

A GK Danny who goes against the JL, the LoA, or the Avengers, or any and every other system of power who would dare hold his people against their wills.

He frees prisoners, systematically demolishes cults and mages, shatters cursed objects, anyone and anything that would dare use spiritual energy that isn't one's own.

Haunted houses are quiet. Cursed or blessed items are now mundane. Necromancers lose any and all will to use their powers again after seeing those blazing green eyes.

The only warning a planet gets before getting swept of anything that is his is the sky turning green and a handful of knights arriving on the horizon, with vengeful eyes and the King lowering a sword with the command, "Save them all."

[widderwise]

DP X Marvel #21

Tony Stark had a lot of regrets in life. Most of them involved tequila, a few bad tattoos he had paid to laser off before Pepper found out, and one especially haunted incident involving a mechanical bull, a congressman’s wife, and the phrase “I dare you.” But none—not even Ultron—could have prepared him for the living, brooding, wall-punching cryptid that was Dante “Dan” Masters.

Dan was technically human. Probably. No one was brave enough to check. He stood 6’7”, made of nothing but scarred muscle and menace, had jawlines sharp enough to commit tax fraud, and wore an expression that screamed “I bench press semi-trucks for therapy.” His hair was raven black and permanently tousled like he’d just walked away from an explosion—which, considering the fact he had actually walked away from an explosion that morning, tracked. His eyes were the kind of ice-blue that made AI go glitchy and interns cry.

Also, he was Tony’s bodyguard.

“I didn’t hire him,” Tony said the first time the Avengers saw Dan.

“You absolutely did,” Pepper replied, not even looking up from her tablet. “You drunkenly told Happy to ‘get me someone who looks like a Greek tragedy and hits like daddy issues.’”

And so Happy had found Dan. Or, more accurately, Dan had found Happy—by appearing in his passenger seat uninvited while Happy was getting a cheeseburger.

Dan never explained how he got there.

“Didn’t open the door. Didn’t break the lock. Just was there,” Happy muttered for the next three weeks. “I looked down to grab fries, looked up, boom. Bodyguard. Demon. Something. He just nodded and said, ‘I eat souls of cowards.’ Then asked for curly fries.”

Tony loved him instantly.

“Look at him,” Tony whispered one night, wine drunk and emotionally vulnerable. “He’s like my own personal murder puppy.”

Steve thought he was horrifying. Natasha called him “the Babadook with a gym membership.” Bruce kept trying to blood test him, but the last time he tried, Dan snapped the needle with his eyelid.

No one knew much about Dan, other than that he was the estranged heir to DALV.CO, the global tech giant run by Vlad Masters, a man whose Wikipedia page had to be locked due to repeated edits claiming he was “the literal Antichrist.”

“Why don’t you go back to your dad’s company?” Tony asked once, halfway through their fourth bottle of scotch, lounging on the penthouse balcony like rich, emotionally constipated divorcees. “You’d be the richest guy in the world.”

“I’d rather castrate myself with a melon baller,” Dan replied.

“Hot.”

Dan just grunted and stared moodily into the skyline, brooding like Batman’s taller, angrier cousin.

There were… signs that Dan wasn’t quite normal. Like the way he phased through walls when he thought no one was looking. Or the time someone tried to stab Tony during a charity gala and Dan grabbed the knife mid-thrust, crushed it into dust with his bare hand, and said, “You missed his heart. Want a second try?”

Tony had to excuse himself for five minutes and blame it on the shrimp cocktail.

Also: Dan never slept. Ever. Tony caught him once at 3 a.m., levitating midair in a meditative pose above the workshop floor, glowing faintly green and whispering what sounded like Latin but angrier.

“Cool trick,” Tony said, filming it for Instagram.

Dan’s eyes snapped open, glowed neon, and he growled, “Delete that or I’ll haunt your teeth.”

Tony deleted it. Reluctantly. But saved a copy in a secret drive labeled “hotboy_shit_DO_NOT_OPEN.”

The first time Dan met Thor, he sized him up for half a second and muttered, “Nice hair, Renaissance frat boy.”

Thor blinked. Then grinned. “I like this one.”

The first time Dan met Loki, he pinned him to the wall with one hand, sniffed once, and said, “You smell like lies and lavender. I don’t trust you.”

“I’m flattered,” Loki purred.

“I wasn’t complimenting you.”

Loki avoided him for two weeks. Claimed it was allergy season.

Dan did not talk. He growled. He glared. He loomed like a death omen in leather jackets. And still—still—every villain who tried to attack Tony ended up launched through a wall, disarmed in under two seconds, or knocked unconscious with a flick of the wrist.

“Are you sure he’s not a meta, or like, a ghost, or something?” Sam asked one day.

Tony blinked. “Ghost? That’s oddly specific.”

“I’m just saying. I saw him walk through a vending machine yesterday and pull out a pack of gum.”

“Maybe it was broken.”

“He reached in, grabbed the gum through the glass, and said, ‘I don’t pay for artificial happiness.’”

“…Okay, that’s just poetry.”

Dan, as it turned out, was a ghost. Sort of. Not the Casper kind. More like the “cursed anomaly spawned from grief and rage after a catastrophic supernatural meltdown in a parallel dimension” kind.

But he didn’t talk about that. Ever. Unless it was to threaten someone into shutting up. Which he did often.

Tony once asked if “Dan” was short for something other than Dante. Dan deadpanned and said, “Damnation.”

Tony laughed. Dan didn’t.

The Avengers all had bets on what Dan really was. Bruce thought he was a failed gamma experiment. Natasha swore he was an eldritch entity in disguise. Steve thought he was “just a really intense guy with trauma.” (Steve was wrong.)

The truth came out, as these things do, during an alien invasion. A random Tuesday. Buildings were exploding, civilians were screaming, and Tony—stupidly, heroically, idiotic as always—got cornered by a space hydra in a burning alley.

“Dan!” he shouted through comms, panicking. “I need backup! Big slimy bastard, eight mouths, hates sarcasm!”

The hydra lunged.

Then Dan exploded out of nowhere in a swirl of black and green fire, his body wreathed in spectral energy, eyes glowing like apocalypse lanterns. He opened his mouth—and screamed.

Not like a human scream. No. Like a banshee from the ninth ring of hell having a breakdown.

The hydra disintegrated. Vaporized into cosmic ash.

Dan turned to Tony, eyes still glowing, hair on fire, his voice doubled and demonic: “You okay?”

Tony, covered in alien guts and halfway to fainting, whispered, “Okay? Okay? I think I just came.”

Dan dropped him.

“Deserved.”

From then on, everything was chaos.

SHIELD tried to recruit him. He burned their files.

HYDRA tried to kidnap him. They didn’t survive the attempt.

Someone from a ghost-hunting organization named G.I.W. showed up once, claiming he was a danger to the world. Dan stared them down and said, “I’ve killed gods for fun. You think I’m scared of a man in khakis?”

They ran screaming.

Tony, of course, was obsessed.

“You’re my new favorite thing,” he declared one night, flopping dramatically onto the couch while Dan watched reruns of Iron Chef in silence. “Like, my favorite. Sorry, Pepper.”

“Don’t drag me into your kinks,” Pepper replied from the hallway.

Dan never officially moved in. But his things started appearing—a toothbrush here, a punching bag in the gym, a fridge filled with nothing but protein shakes and hot sauce. Eventually, Tony just gave him a keycard.

And maybe a second suit in case he ever wanted to try flying. Dan declined. He could already fly. Casually. Like it was no big deal.

Also: he could turn invisible. Tony found this out when he walked into his lab naked at 2 a.m. and muttered, “If there’s anyone here, speak now or forever hold your—”

“I’m here.”

Tony screamed. Dan was perched on the ceiling.

“Why are you like this?!”

“Because I hate peace.”

Eventually, the world found out. A viral video. A fight gone wrong. Dan going full phantom mode on live TV and decapitating an alien with a manhole cover.

Headlines exploded.

“Heir to DALV.CO Is a Literal Ghost.”

“Tony Stark’s Bodyguard Is an Interdimensional Specter, and Honestly, Same.”

“Dante Masters: Hot, Haunted, and Horrifying.”

Vlad Masters showed up. Tried to reclaim Dan.

Dan answered the door shirtless, covered in blood, holding a spatula. “I’m cooking pancakes. Leave before I use you as syrup.”

Tony peeked from behind him. “He means it.”

Dan shut the door in Vlad’s face.

“I hate that man,” he muttered.

Tony smiled dreamily. “I love you.”

“…Stop.”

“Nope. Too late. Suffering together forever.”

Dan groaned. But he didn’t leave.

He never did.

[widderwise]

Um.. Superman.. what that thing stuck on your cape?

Clark's brain short circuit for a moment as he just got back of flying at great speed in the middle of deep space to thrown one of Lex's giants bombs destroy the city and come back in record time.

He turn a bit to look at his cape to see a tiny humanoid starlight dust covered child with white hair, glowing full green that look like white specks stars were implanted themselves into his big ol eyes, nawing on a handful of stardust with inhumanly sharp itsy bitsy fangs.

A small yet floating crown that look similar to one of Nasa pictures of far out space.

Did he just accidentally abducted an royal alien child/teen?

[widderwise]

my take on the miss piggy/morticia addams sexywoman poll is that while morticia would lose gracefully, miss piggy would 1000% attempt murder over the label and morticia would respect her for it. then theyd go out for tea and gossip together

[widderwise]

DPxDC Prompt #17

There is a room Danny's Keep he set up shortly after defeating Pariah Dark. It became necessary when the broader magical community realized Pariah had be defeated and therefore a new King took his throne. Danny found himself briefly bombarded with waves of attempted summonings.

Which, the summonings themselves, wouldn't have been so bad. Turns out people can't just drag the King of Ghosts to themselves on a whim. Danny has to actively accept a summoning to get pulled to it. And if he just decides "No," the pull and whispers go away. No problem there.

No, the problem is the offerings. And sacrifices. The things that people put in the circle as payment for even attempting to summon him. Like having to put a quarter in the payphone just to listen to it ring and ring and ring as the person on the other end of the call doesn't pick up. Since the summoning magic regarded these things as belonging to Danny even if he rejected the summons, they usually ended up just materializing in front of him if he didn't go to them.

Which, okay. It was funny that time he got to end a fight with Vlad very fast when a whole gold bar materialized and dropped on his head. And the food was nice sometimes when it was late and everywhere was closed and his parents had left samples in the fridge to contaminate everything into animation again. But the goat head dropping from the ceiling onto his desk during on of Lancer's English tests was not appreciated. Even if it did get the test rescheduled and the whole school shut down for a few days to investigate the "potentially satanic activity."

So, yeah, it was a bit of a problem. Fortunately, it was a problem with a relatively simple solution. Danny set up an inbox. With a bit of help from Tucker and Pandora, and a couple tips from Clockwork; all summoning offerings and sacrifices would now go straight to the dedicated room in the Keep.

And! As a special touch, the summoners would also get a chipper, automated voice saying, "The Ghost King you are trying to summon has more important things to do than answer you right now. Please leave a message in the circle with your name, date, location, contact information, and reason for summoning. The Ghost King will get back to you at his earliest convenience." Sam's stupid fancy girl gala voice had been perfect for that little message.

It was the perfect solution. Danny no longer had to deal with randomly materializing offerings putting his secret identity at risk. Pariah's skeletons, who had been antsy for something to do now that they were no longer bent under the thumb of a cruel tyrant, were instructed to take care of all the offerings; making sure everything was always cleaned up and put away. And all Danny had to do was stop by periodically to check in and "Officially respond" -ie, write a fuck off note- to the summoning messages (Clockwork's insistence).

A perfect solution. Up until Danny checked in one day to find the skellies pampering a whole ass boy. No. Not just any boy. Danny recognizes that costume.

"Why is Robin here?"

[widderwise]

DP X Marvel #22

Nick Fury hadn’t known peace in years. Aliens, HYDRA, interdimensional rifts, Tony Stark’s emotional instability—he thought he’d seen it all. That was until a small, gremlin-like twelve-year-old girl phased through the wall of the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, exploded three vending machines with a casual flick of her wrist, and declared with unshakeable confidence, “You guys owe me a snack for saving the multiverse.”

Her name was Danielle Phantom—Dani, with an “i”—and she was, allegedly, a clone of a ghost-human hybrid from another dimension. She was twelve, made entirely out of spite and ectoplasm, and Nick Fury made the catastrophic mistake of not immediately tossing her into a containment chamber.

Not that it would’ve helped. The last time they tried, she melted the titanium walls by burping.

“She’s not a threat,” Banner had insisted.

“She’s twelve!” Steve argued.

“She called me a rotting rotisserie chicken and set my cape on fire,” Thor grumbled, looking genuinely unsettled.

“She’s perfect,” Tony said. “Can I adopt her?”

“NO,” Fury barked. “She’s mine.”

And that’s how Dani Phantom became Nick Fury’s personal chaos goblin.

It started with the incident in Belarus. Fury had sent her to shadow a low-risk intel extraction mission—get in, get out, observe. She got bored. Two hours later, she returned with the mission completed, three HYDRA bases blown up, and a new trench coat she’d stolen off an agent twice her size. She looked proud. She also had a churro.

“Where the hell did you get that?” Fury asked.

“Multiversal Costco. Long story.”

She ate it while hovering upside down.

Dani didn’t walk. She floated. She didn’t knock. She phased through walls, floors, and sometimes people, which she claimed was “great for making dudes pee themselves.” She kept trying to haunt Clint Barton’s hearing aids (“for funsies”), called Natasha “Murder Barbie,” and threatened to sell Peter to the Tooth Fairy for “a good price.”

“I don’t even have ghost teeth!” Peter shrieked.

“Exactly. You’re rare,” Dani replied ominously.

She made the mistake of touching Loki once. Just once. She’d been told not to.

“Don’t touch the Asgardian,” Fury had said.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because he’s the God of Mischief.”

“Oh. Cool.”

She poked him.

Loki screamed. She screamed louder. Everyone screamed. For some reason, there were snakes involved by the end of it.

Now, every time Loki sees Dani, he immediately teleports to another continent. “She’s worse than Odin,” he whispers, eyes wide and glassy.

Fury had to admit: Dani got results. She was an absolute menace—a glowing, cackling, miniature poltergeist in ripped jeans and combat boots—but she could sniff out a Kree spy from fifty yards away, beat an Ultron drone with a piece of rebar, and disable alien tech by licking it. (He didn’t approve of that one, but she claimed it was “a ghost thing.”)

“Why do you keep her?” Hill asked him one day, as Dani was in the background convincing a rookie agent that she was a resurrected Soviet weapon.

Fury sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Because the little gremlin saved my life.”

That part was true. He’d been cornered by a Skrull impersonating Agent Coulson, and before he could blink, Dani had flown through the ceiling screaming, “NOT MY BALD DAD, YOU SLIMEY LIZARD BASTARD!” She obliterated the Skrull with a ghost ray and threw Fury over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“You weigh like a thousand pounds!” she’d grunted, struggling to fly him out of danger.

“Put me down!”

“No! You’re grounded and dying on my watch is against the rules!”

It was, somehow, the most competent rescue Fury had ever experienced.

From then on, Dani followed him everywhere. She sat in on briefings, chewing bubblegum obnoxiously loud. She hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D. files just to draw little ghost doodles on top of agent profiles. She replaced the AI’s voice with her own. Every time the intercom came on, it was her:

“Attention all agents, remember to hydrate or I will personally possess you and make you chug milk.”

She terrorized the Avengers with zero remorse. Steve got glitter-bombed. Clint was stalked by a floating sandwich. Banner’s lab notes were mysteriously replaced with eldritch doodles and “Dani was here” scribbled in the margins. Tony found all his Iron Man suits programmed to play “Ghostbusters” every time they powered on.

“I SWEAR TO GOD, IF I HEAR THAT SONG ONE MORE TIME—”

“Who ya gonna call?” Dani whispered from inside the vents.

Tony screamed.

But in her own completely deranged way, she was loyal. Deadly. Protective.

When some alien parasite tried to mind-control Fury, Dani showed up mid-briefing, opened her mouth, and screamed—a full-on ghost wail that shattered the windows and disintegrated the creature instantly.

Silence.

Everyone stared.

Dani wiped her mouth and grinned. “Oops. Was that loud?”

Fury was on the floor, bleeding from the ears. “You think?”

Later, she brought him noise-canceling earmuffs with skull stickers. “For next time.”

Fury eventually stopped questioning it. He’d wake up and find her floating three inches above his bed.

“Sleep check,” she’d say.

“I am very awake now.”

“Good.”

She haunted meetings, stole alien artifacts to make jewelry, and referred to Maria Hill exclusively as “General Mom.” She threatened to possess Tony’s coffee machine and did it. It only made decaf for three months. He cried.

And somehow, Dani ended up as the unofficial child mascot of S.H.I.E.L.D.

She was terrifying.

She was beloved.

She bit Deadpool once. He cried.

And yet, when Fury got taken by a rogue faction of former S.W.O.R.D. agents trying to expose classified data, the first person to show up wasn’t Steve, or Natasha, or even Carol.

It was Dani.

She burst in mid-interrogation, glowing, floating, and furious. Her eyes blazed green. Her ponytail whipped behind her like a comet trail. She didn’t say anything.

She just started throwing people.

“YOU THINK YOU CAN KIDNAP MY DAD?!” she screamed, hurling a desk at someone’s face. “I live in his walls! I KNOW THINGS!”

“You’re not even related to me!” Fury yelled as she fried a guy with ectoplasmic lightning.

“I TOOK A BLOOD TEST ONLINE AND IT SAID I’M 78% NICK FURY, 22% CHICKEN NUGGET!”

“You WHAT?!”

She ghost-punched the lead agent into the ceiling, caught Fury by the collar, and flew him out of the crumbling compound as everything exploded behind them.

When they landed, she wiped the soot from his coat, then hugged him hard.

He stood there stiffly before awkwardly patting her head.

“You’re insane,” he muttered.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“I’m not your—”

“Too late. I already wrote it in my diary.”

Later, at S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ, Dani threw her feet up on the command table and declared, “This whole place is my haunted house now.”

Nobody argued.

The AI was programmed to greet her.

The agents stepped aside when she passed.

She had a personal couch that she’d painted green and black, and a glowing “NO NERDS” sign that Tony kept trying to steal.

Every so often, she disappeared into the multiverse. “Gotta stretch the legs,” she’d say, then come back two hours later with three infinity stones, a new jacket, and a baby goat.

Fury didn’t ask.

He learned not to ask.

But when the next alien invasion hit—when half of Manhattan lit up with something eldritch and writhing and very not-from-Earth—it wasn’t Thor who responded first.

It was Dani.

Hovering above Times Square, cracking her knuckles, eyes glowing like nuclear fallout.

“Alright, weird space tentacle thing,” she said. “You just messed with the wrong twelve-year-old.”

And from the helicarrier, sipping his bitter coffee, Nick Fury watched the ghost girl he never asked for absolutely wreck an interdimensional horror, cackling like a goblin while civilians cheered.

He sighed.

“God help us all.”

[widderwise]

Can we have more crazy antics of Oldest Batkid Danny!?

In particular order, here are ten things Danny "The Mence" Fenton-Wayne has done after being adopted by Bruce when his parents sold him to a lab:

1. Danny once flooded Wayne Manor before he found out Bruce and Batman were the same person. He thought Batman was a vampire and the running water would stop him. If they all drowned in the process, they at least would not suffer being vampire food.

2. Alfred has a rule that every Wayne needs to work part-time to be humble and appropriate working class. Danny created his own business of leading people on ghost tours and made SURE they always saw one. He purposely pointed at people in school after word got around and whispered, "The spirits want you." Everyone freaked.

3. Dick made ONE comment of people being mean to him in school for being raised in the circus. Danny cut the power in Gotham Academy and released laughing clowns animatronics waving chainsaws into the hallways. They were programmed to avoid "Fellow Circus folk" painting Dick as a hero when he walked his terrified classmates out .

4. During a live interview, Danny twisted the questions on the host, who was attempting to make Bruce look like a bad Father. He then painted Bruce as someone showing severe signs of depression (overly drinking, too many smiles, giving people too many gifts, vanishing from the public eye, and searching for comfort in someone's arm) and then making the host cry by psycho-analyzing him.

5. Organized a protest for affordable housing and kept kicking the gas grenades back at the cops when they were called on him. It took seven people to get him into a cop car in handcuffs, and he was hissing the entire time. When Bruce attempted to bail him out, Danny moved the funds to get the innocent people out and refused to get out of the cell until the cop who punched him cried.

6. He shaved Clark's head because he couldn't scare him with a knife. Clark was more impressed that he did it without him waking up. He left oniomous messages written in what Clark thinks is blood on his walls, saying, "Stay away from my Dad. Keep it in your pants."

7. Armed with a clipboard, Danny habitually throws people out of Bruce's galas. He doesn't even explain himself; he just pops up, points at someone, and shakes his head. A security team swarms the person and tosses them out before they can get a word in. Bruce did not hire that security team. (Danny throws out people flirting with Bruce)

8. He was accused of being Batman or working with him once. He responded with a smile and a gentle, "If I were Batman, I wouldn't have let any of them live." Everyone agreed there was no possible way he wouldn't go for the kill if he had the chance and never questioned him again about it.

9. He Got the words "Peace was never an option" tattooed on his back by a Crime Alley tattoo parlor. Bruce had to then bail him out again when Danny fought off a gang who attempted to mug him as he was leaving the alley with his new tattoo. He had proof it was self-defense and spent the entire news coverage gushing about the tattoo artist's skills instead of the mugging.

10. Every time Bruce brought a new kid after Dick to the house, they were under the impression Danny was a violent, unreasonable person. They were shocked to learn he's the most in touch with his emotions, regularly does self-employment, and is so soft with them; he is the walking embodiment of Doting Big Brother. In his hero persona, he is just as gentle and as fondly looked upon by the masses. It took them a moment to realize that Danny had copied Bruce's idea of keeping his hero and civilian ID separate, but his Hero version is the Brucie, and his Civilian version Is the Batman.

[widderwise]

DP X Marvel #25

Danny Fenton hadn’t meant to punch Captain America in the face. In fact, he’d spent the better part of the week trying not to punch anyone, despite the rapidly growing laundry list of reasons to lose his cool—like not sleeping for seventy-two hours because Technus decided to merge his data with every Bluetooth speaker in the tri-state area, or the GIW tracking his every move again, or that weird, suspicious portal energy he kept picking up from somewhere labeled Stark Tower. Danny was running on fumes, ghostly adrenaline, and one too many Red Bulls when it happened. Really, the stars aligned perfectly for an international incident.

He’d only been in New York for six hours, trying to find the source of the energy spike without alerting every superhero on the block—because the last thing he needed was to get into it with the Avengers. Again. The last time had involved Hulk trying to punch a ghost and failing miserably, Thor throwing Mjölnir into the Ghost Zone, and Iron Man demanding to know if ectoplasm was FDA approved. It was a whole thing.

Danny was crouched on the rooftop of some high-rise, scanning with a modified Fenton Specter-Tracker, eyes bloodshot and twitching slightly. He hadn’t slept since Monday. It was Thursday.

“Hey, kid,” came a voice behind him, calm but firm.

Danny spun like a feral cat, eyes glowing, hair frizzed out with ghost static. He registered the silhouette of a man—tall, broad-shouldered, carrying a star-shaped shield—and his brain went danger. Ghost hunter? No. GIW agent? No. Super-soldier-hydra-time-travel-experiment?

He didn’t even process it. He just swung.

There was a crack like a thunderclap, followed by the very human sound of pain—a grunt that broke mid-voice like it had surprised the man himself. Captain Steve Rogers staggered back, hand pressed to his jaw, blinking stars out of his vision and trying to comprehend the fact that someone had just hit him hard enough to make him feel it. Not just feel it—wince. His serum-enhanced, war-hardened, literally-punched-by-Thor-once jaw hurt.

Danny stood frozen, fist still outstretched, pupils blown wide in horror.

“Oh my God. Oh my God. I just punched Captain America. I just decked the star-spangled man with a plan. I am so sorry—I thought you were a ghost! Or like—a time-traveling war criminal! Wait, that’s redundant—”

“Okay, wow,” Steve mumbled, touching his jaw again. “That’s definitely gonna bruise.”

Danny looked like he was about to combust. “Why were you behind me like that?! Who just materializes out of nowhere and says ‘hey, kid’ in the middle of a rooftop stakeout?! I thought I was being ambushed!”

Steve blinked. “I was asking for directions.”

Danny gasped. “You were WHAT?”

Steve looked sheepish. “Tony dropped me off on the wrong building. Said, and I quote, ‘GPS is for cowards.’ I’ve been circling the same three blocks for twenty minutes.”

Danny stared. “Captain America got lost and asked a sleep-deprived half-ghost teenager for directions?”

“I didn’t know you were a sleep-deprived half-ghost teenager,” Steve said defensively. “You looked… competent. Specter-tracker aside.”

Danny made a strangled noise and sat down hard, face buried in his hands. “I’m going to be assassinated by your PR team.”

Steve rubbed his jaw again. “You’re stronger than you look.”

“That is not the point here!”

“No, seriously,” Steve insisted, kneeling down. “That punch? I’ve taken hits from Thanos. You rattled me.”

Danny peeked through his fingers. “Are you flirting with me?”

“What? No!”

“You’re complimenting my punch like it’s a pickup line.”

“I’m—okay, no. You’re a kid.”

“I’m nineteen!”

Steve squinted. “You look like you’ve been through five timelines and one midlife crisis.”

“I have!” Danny wailed. “Do you know what it’s like to babysit the entire ghost population of the afterlife and then accidentally elbow Thor in the ribs during a training session because you forgot he was behind you?! I’m a walking international crisis!”

Steve paused. “Wait. You trained with Thor?”

“Long story. I died once, came back, now I punch ghosts for fun and may or may not be legally considered a WMD by six governments.”

Steve took a long breath. “Do all teenagers do this now? Or is this just a… you thing?”

Danny groaned. “Just me. I’m special.”

Steve lowered his shield and sat cross-legged like they were about to have a heart-to-heart. “You okay, kid?”

“No! I haven’t slept in three days, my enemies keep possessing animatronics to scare me, and I just committed accidental patriotic assault!”

Steve tried not to smile. He really did. “You got a name?”

Danny sighed. “Danny. Danny Fenton. Or Phantom. Depends on how you know me.”

Steve looked intrigued. “You’re the ghost kid.”

Danny flinched. “I prefer ghost young adult, thank you.”

“You’re the one Nick Fury won’t shut up about.”

Danny’s eyes widened. “He talks about me?”

“Nonstop. Every meeting. ‘The ghost kid leveled a tank with his pinky finger!’ ‘The ghost kid opened a portal to another dimension with a yawn!’” Steve did a passable impression of Fury’s gruff voice. “‘You think your team’s strong? Try containing a seventeen-year-old who talks to the dead like it’s a podcast!’”

Danny laughed, a bit unhinged, definitely sleep-deprived. “I did do the tank thing. That was an accident.”

“Fury thinks you’re the future.”

“That’s horrifying.”

“You’re not wrong.”

Danny looked at him warily. “Are you gonna try to recruit me?”

Steve considered. “Honestly? Not until you’ve slept. You look like you’d punch Thor if he asked you for coffee.”

“I have, and I did, and he was proud of me.”

“…Of course he was.”

There was a moment of silence, just the city humming beneath them, both of them sitting cross-legged like two war veterans who somehow found themselves on a rooftop in Manhattan instead of the battlefield they were clearly built for.

“So,” Steve said eventually. “You gonna tell me why you’re camped out here?”

Danny pointed to the tracker. “Someone in that building”—he gestured vaguely toward Stark Tower—“is leaking interdimensional ghost radiation like it’s designer cologne. I was trying to be subtle.”

Steve looked at the tower. “That’s Tony.”

Danny blinked. “Tony Stark is radiating ectoplasmic energy?”

“Yeah. He bought a ghost portal off eBay last month. Said it’d be good for ‘multiverse surveillance.’ It… got loose.”

Danny stood up so fast he swayed. “I knew it! I told Jazz that someone was messing with rogue ghost portals again and she said I was paranoid! I am paranoid! But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong!”

“You’re… very high-strung.”

Danny glared. “Do you have a collection of alternate-universe versions of yourself constantly trying to kill you?”

Steve held up his hands. “Fair.”

Suddenly, Danny wobbled. His legs buckled, and Steve caught him with a grunt. “Woah, hey, hey! Okay, that’s enough hero time for now.”

“I’m fine,” Danny slurred. “I’ve just been awake for three days. It’s not a problem unless I—”

He passed out.

Steve stared down at the kid—a half-dead, glowing teen who apparently punched like a demigod and talked like a sitcom character on speed—and muttered, “…Tony owes me so much alcohol for this.”

He slung Danny over his shoulder and started walking toward the Tower.

A few floors down, Tony Stark looked up from his holograms and blinked as the elevator pinged open.

Steve walked in carrying what looked like a sleep-dead raccoon in human form.

Tony blinked. “Did you adopt a raccoon?”

“He punched me.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “…You?”

“Knocked me back five feet.”

Tony whistled. “Damn. Strong raccoon.”

“He’s nineteen. Name’s Danny Fenton. Ghost kid.”

Tony’s eyes widened. “Oh. Oh. The one Fury thinks is a nuclear bomb with social anxiety.”

Steve dumped Danny on the nearest couch. “Let him sleep. He earned it.”

Tony looked down at Danny. “Should I be worried he’s glowing?”

“No. But maybe hide the ghost portal.”

Tony scoffed. “I knew someone was tracking it.”

Danny stirred, groaning, “Stark, I swear to the Ancients, if I wake up and your toaster is haunted again, I’m putting salt in your arc reactor…”

Steve stared. “Wait, what?”

Tony sighed. “Long story. Ghosts don’t like me. Something about my attitude.”

Steve sat down, already dreading explaining this to Fury.

Across the room, Danny turned on his side, mumbled, “Tell the Captain I didn’t mean to punch him…”

Steve looked over, surprisingly fond. “It’s fine, kid. I’ve had worse.”

Danny let out a soft snore.

Tony grinned. “You’re getting soft.”

“He reminds me of Bucky.”

Tony choked. “Excuse me?”

Steve shrugged. “If Bucky died and came back with ghost powers, he’d absolutely punch me in the face for fun.”

“…Okay, yeah, that tracks.”

And thus began the weird, wonderful, mildly catastrophic journey of Danny Fenton, ghost boy, menace to the Avengers, and accidental best friend to Captain America, who still rubbed his jaw now and then, remembering the punch that nearly knocked out a super-soldier’s tooth.