dp x dc

I’m usually more of a lurker in this fandom, you know? But this happened and it just needed to be written down. If someone wants to take the idea or continue it, go for it! Prompt - Consort

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Danny is told that while he is officially the Ghost King, there are a few last minute things to check off the list to keep the Observants from being able to mess with Danny's business. Clockwork even subtly confirms that this is something Danny should consider carefully. Being able to keep them in check is important.

 While not keen on a to-do list, Danny sighs and trusts that Clockwork is ultimately giving him less work.

He spends a few years doing odds and ends. Whatever task Clockwork mentions and it honestly suits Danny fine. It’s giving him time to grow into his position. It’s going well, that is until he learns that in his last task he has to consummate his newly acquired position in a very traditional way. With someone else...

That's bad enough, but it's thrown out to him that he must do this with one of his own kind. It's never been an issue before since The Ghost King is usually... a ghost and can pick whoever they want in the Zone.

Danny however is a halfa and because he's only one of three halfa's he's forced to pick between Vlad and Dani. A fruit loop and his clone/sister. The first is horrifying on many levels and the second is just plain unappealing. It's not happening, nope. 

It's practically a miracle that before Danny can completely fall into panic, Clockwork mentions the existence of a forth halfa. 

It doesn't matter who they are, it HAS to be better then his current options. That's how Danny ends up in Gotham.

~

"I can't believe you went without us." Sam complained. "We could have gone with you. What if you need help?" 

"I don't think Gotham is ready for ghost powers, Sam." Tucker commented. "Any trouble he runs into won't know what hit them." 

"Could you both stop wishing trouble on me?" Danny asked, he should have known he'd get ganged up on when he had them both on the phone at once. He was looking around and had noticed how he wasn't headed to the...best of neighborhoods. Had he not had ghost powers he might have turned right around. 

He'd gotten a fairly nice hotel room for the long weekend in a somewhat nice area. All of Gotham looked pretty damn bleak to him but at least he could easily survive in a place like this. There was so much ambient ectoplasm in the air that he was, frankly, surprised he hadn't spotted more ghosts. It was all to his benefit though. 

"Wishing?" Tucker chuckled, the sound of his keyboard clicking on the other side of the call. "It'll find you whether we wish it or not." 

"And then you'll be able to say you got to fight in Gotham." Sam lamented. 

"So this isn't about me not bringing you along to help me find this halfa, but because you just wanted to see this city in particular?" 

"Little bit." 

Tucker started laughing. "Damn, Sam. Nothing's stopping you from visiting." 

"There absolutely is." Sam grumbled. "Their names are Jeremy and Pam." "We're graduating soon, Sam." Danny commented. "After both your eighteen birthday and graduation you'll find your freedom." 

"And possibly your way out of their living will." Tucker commented, but Sam only snickered at the thought.

"That doesn't help me today. Danny's out in one of the coolest cities ever on a quest to get laid, and we’re stuck having a boring weekend." "Sam." Danny hissed as if someone else could have possibly over heard their conversation. This entire situation was beyond awkward. He didn't even know how to start. Hi, you're a halfa too? Wild? Wanna sleep with me so i can make sure my position isn't puppeteered?   "What? That's literally why you're there." Sam was back to being amused, conveniently forgetting for a second that she wasn't with him in Gotham. "You're not gonna seduce anyone with that attitude." "I'm not trying-!" "Aren't you supposed to be though?" She hummed. "Gotta put that charm to work, Phantom." "Oh shut up..." Danny grumbled. If this halfa immediately pegged him as king, would they feel obligated to sleep with him? Ugh, this was the worst. If the ghost he was tracking lived in this neighborhood then it was no wonder he was half dead... "I mean, the wording of this could mean anything." Tucker commented right as the clicking stopped. He'd shown his to-do list to Sam and Tucker ages ago, and this hurdle had always seemed so daunting. "Go forth and find what's just. A night of bliss and trust. A match for your soul in desire. A second coming to conspire." Tucker repeated the lines. "Man, someone did not take a poetry class." Danny just made a face, so sick of the instructions that even making fun of it didn't help anymore. "And you think that can mean anything?" Sam hummed quietly. "I guess you were told it was a basic innuendo so that's what you hear. It’s what we all heard." "Yeah, it doesn't say go fuck." Tucker said. "Could just mean you could hang out for a night and vibe. Video games. Take out." Danny made a face. "I can't see me doing that with Vlad either." "I should fucking hope not." He could practically see Sam's disgusted face. "Okay but that still doesn't make sense. I gotta hang out with another halfa? Why? Why would that block the Observants and their never ending input?" Danny wondered. "No idea." Tucker relented, "But it's worth a shot. right? You can always hang out first and see if it works. If it doesn't... well then you know what you gotta do." "Flirt. Bend over and show your butt. It's eye catching." "Sam..." Danny sighed, this was exhausting. She clucked her tongue. "It's good advice. Even Paulina did a double take last week." Danny just made an irritated sound in his throat, nearly tripping over a destroyed section of the side walk. All the businesses nearby had bars across their windows as extra security and more and more people seemed to loiter. "So glad that ship has sailed." Young crushes were painful. "It could also mean cuddling?" Tucker offered. "How'd you make that leap?" Sam asked. "Guys." Danny interrupted suddenly, his ghost sense chilling him. "I'll call you guys back. I might have tracked them down." "Don't forget!" Tucker said, tone only slightly accusatory. Sam just made a noise of agreement. "We'll want the whole play by play." "Well... maybe not the whole play by play." Tucker added, but Danny just hung up on them. His support system was filled with bullies. See if they got their Gotham tee-shirts now! Danny turned down an alleyway, not sure just yet what he was following but it felt fairly powerful. So far he'd seen mostly shades and remnants of what was. He was left to try to find this halfa the same way he had to track down Dani when looking for her, and that usually meant looking for a big source. When he took a turn and nearly walked right into an obvious drug deal, he inhaled sharply and turned invisible. The dealer had looked up at the sound but brushed it off a moment later when he didn't see anyone rounding the corner. Gotham was nuts but at least they weren't clowns. Deciding it really was within his best interest, Danny transformed completely, staying invisible for the time being as he followed his ghost sense through the scary part of town. Minutes felt like hours but he spotted a dude coming closer on a motorcycle and Danny's skin felt like it was vibrating. The halfa was a guy, okay. Danny could work with that, he really could. Even sitting on the bike, the guy looked a head taller than Danny. All the ghost powers in the world couldn't take away him inheriting his mothers build. For fucks sake, did he have to become evil to bulk up?! Danny flew closer, wanting to get a good look, only to have his vision impeded by a red helmet. When the bike swerved and the rider looked around around, likely sensing him, Danny backed off. His jaw was already hanging open in disbelief. Red Hood. That was Red Hood. Red Hood was a halfa?! Okay, he was the freaking Ghost King. When was that memo gonna land on his desk. Holy crap. Was he actually going to ask Red Hood to have sex ...er... platonically hang out with him? Danny's face was going to explode with heat. He flew away, watching him from the sky. Red Hood slowly brushed off whatever he had felt from Danny and rode on, making only a few more turns before stopping at an apartment building that Danny wouldn't have thought was still in use. This had secret lair written all over it. Danny followed, waited, watched. Of course he knew all about the vigilantes of Gotham but he hadn't really expected to run into any of them. Honestly, what were the odds? What did he do? Red Hood was technically a killer but he'd met more then one ghost who'd been avenged. It caused mixed feelings really. After two hours of nothing, a guy walked out of the same apartment. This time in street clothes. Same build, same height, same half energy. Crap. There goes that secret identity. Danny didn't know his name but he knew what he looked like. Dark hair, that curl of white in the front. Light eyes. Permanent looking frown and... Well now, Danny was frowning too. Something about his energy was off putting. Twisted. Wrong. Well... that would need to be looked into. From afar, Danny watched him go about his evening which involved stopping into those little stores and checking on people. Those people seemed to greet him with a friendly smile and know him somewhat well. Danny also got the impression that none of these people knew he was Red Hood, though he wasn't sure it would have mattered if they had. Red Hood was a crime lord but this was his territory... his haunt. Danny wasn't quite sure how this was both incredibly confusing while making all the sense in the world. He'd have an attitude too if his ectoplasm was all jacked up. What was he supposed to do? Suddenly if felt so presumptuous to show up at this guys doorstep to ask for such a favor from a stranger. He could leave and figure something else out, but the guy clearly needed help too. Maybe they could work out a trade or something. Danny felt torn about the whole damn thing and only decided to suck it up and act like an adult when his alternative was to call Jazz and ask for advice and he was not asking his sister about this. He flew ahead of the guy, making it back to his apartment first. He turned human again and sat on the stoop to wait for him. Internally he went over his lines in his head, what he would say, what parts he could leave out but all of that stopped when a shadow towered over him. The guy somehow seemed so much bigger in person. "You alright, kid?" he asked, there was the strange mix of concern and suspicion on his face. "There's housing up the street if you need someplace to go. They take anyone." "Oh uh..." His haunt had a place like that? Cool. So much for all those lines he’d been rehearsing. "I wanted to talk to you, actually. If you have a second?" He raised a brow but gestured to Danny with a nod to continue. Guess they were doing this out here then. "Okay, this is going to sound strange as hell but i've been looking for another halfa to help me with something. It's like.. a stupid huge favor and, fuck i hate even calling it a favor because that sounds weird. I also wanted to say up front that you can totally turn me down too, this isn't like, a demand or anything." Danny started talking, and couldn't seem to stop. His nerves were getting the better of him along side this guys emotions which were confused and itching with something aggravating. "It's not like i wrote this particular law either. I'm not even sure why i agreed to this shit but i've seen bad alternatives before a-" "What the fuck are you talking about, kid?" he interrupted. "Rude. I am actually eighteen." Danny grumbled. His eyes narrowed. Did he think he was lying about his age? "You sure about that?" "Yeah, my birthday is the same day every year." Danny deadpanned, almost getting a smile. "Let me start over, um, my name is Danny." he stood but didn't offer his hand because this guy didn't look like he'd take it. "And i've been looking for you." "Right i sorta got that, but why?" Danny could already feel his ears turning red. "Okay, hear me out because this sound fucking awful. I need to sleep with a halfa." Just rip that baid-aid off right?

Red Hood's frown was back full force. Guess he was still Red Hood since he didn't offer a name. "What the fuck is a halfa?" Danny short circuited. Was it possible this guy didn't know? "Okay." Danny said slowly. "Backing up and starting over again. Did you... You... You know you died once, right?" He scowled. "Yeah, i was there. How the fuck do you know that?" "Oh good, we don't gotta go back that far. Okay. Okay, so a halfa is someone that died. Like me." He gestured to himself. "Who came back. Someone who is half dead and half alive. There's only four of us. I have to sleep with one because of some political bullshit and i know how desperate that has to sound to you but i absolutely can not sleep with my sister or a fruit loop that wants to marry my mom." Red Hood stepped closer, a large hand wrapping around Danny’s bicep and pulling him along with him towards his door. It was opened long enough for the two of them to slip through and then shut and locked again. "Alright, lets unpack everything that just left your mouth and start to pick out the sane verses insane pieces." He said, somewhat exasperated. He was unhappy. Very unhappy. Danny had to hide a wince, guess Hood wasn’t ready to talk about his death. Jazz would be pissed, he needed to learn to be more sensitive about these things. "You're half dead?" "And so are you." Danny said. "Haven't you noticed any ghost abilities?" "Any what...?"  Distress. That was an odd reaction. Danny looked around, there wasn't much furniture but there was a couch and Danny made a show of going intangible and walking right through it. "Anything like that?" Red Hood was frowning. "No. Look. Half dead and half alive sounds more like a zombie to me. Where are you getting this ghost shit? How did you find me at all?" "Ghost sense." He scowled. "Of course." Danny sighed a little, biting his lip and brushing a piece of hair from his face. "Okay, this is my fault. I'm bad at explaining and i'm sorta having too many conversations at once. Lets start with you. You ever seen like.. glowy green sludge?" His scowl deepened, for a second there was true hatred etched into his face but it wasn't directed at Danny. The suspicion and distrust however were. "What do you have to do with the Lazarus Pit?" Danny blinked, it was evidently his turned to be confused. "The what?" "The green shit, kid. The Lazarus Pit. It's what did this shit to me. What drives me insane." Danny frowned. "The green sludge is ectoplasm, which we need. It shouldn't hurt you, but if it did...could explain why you feel so twisted up inside." He scoffed. "Twisted up, that's the kindest way anyone has ever put it. I don’t need someone elses insane ramblings on top of what i already got in my head. So if you're looking for a fuck, go somewhere else." "Okay." Danny muttered, he'd known that could be an option. "But would you let me see if i could straighten out to ectoplasm anyway? I think i can help at least a little and uh, i think your's is trying to eat away at your soul which is...bad?" Hood actually dropped onto the couch, looking beyond done with this day. "Do you think you there's anything i haven't tried?" "I bet you have." Danny said, stepping closer. "But my ectoplasm is healthy and isn't trying to eat me. You don't really have anything to lose, do you?" Trustme. Trustme.  His expression was nearly murderous and Danny could taste the rage. It seemed like he was having a hard time controlling it, and the more Danny looked, the more he was blaming the tainted ectoplasm. It even seemed to block some of the calm Danny was pushing towards him. "Kid, you have no idea what you're -" Danny stepped closer, hands on Red Hood's chest. He could feel the faint humming of a drowning core, trying to breath through the toxicity that had been forced into his body. Danny added his own ectoplasm to the mix, a sort of ghost transfusion. Ghost King privileges came with a wide aura and a lot of energy. There was a shudder, and the difference was almost instantaneous. The tainted ectoplasm had tried to rear up, tried to roll into rage and snowball but Danny just had more to work with. Danny didn't remember kneeling in front of his new acquaintance, or shutting his eyes, or shifting into his ghost form. He was however, aware of his core tuning into Red Hood's, trying to coax it to life...so to speak. He didn't know what it would have been like, a half ghost but confined only to his human side. Maybe if he'd never known any better it wouldn't have mattered to him but the thought of it now was suffocating,

There was a moment when Danny suddenly felt Hood’s confusion. It seems like he was finally picking up on Danny’s silent messages. 

"What did you do?" Red Hood asked, sounding tired, but far less hostile. "You made it quiet. You're also..glowing." Danny looked up at him with a nervous laugh. "Well, i did say i could fix it. This fix is kinda temporary but I know Frostbite can fix it for you permanently. I'll talk to him." He reached up and rubbed at his eyes, "...Thanks...." "No problem Hood." His eyes jerked up and Danny just smiled. "I won't tell anyone..." He hissed in soft irritation but it didn’t match his emotions. He was still riding the high of being in control of that rage. "So i did feel you following me earlier? I swear there was something around." Danny nodded once. "Had to be sure you were who i thought you were... and all..." Excuse. Excuse... Red Hood shook his head. "My name's Jason. I have a hundred questions minimum about this half ghost thing." "I could probably answer most of them?" Danny offered, realizing he was still on his knees in front of Jason and quickly getting up, a cold blush coloring his face as he shifted back into his human form.  Jason watched him, brow quirking again but he seemed so much more relaxed now that the tension was drained out of him and the taint to his ectoplasm was quiet. It almost made him seem a little younger too, not that Danny would have pegged him any older than early twenties, if that. Maybe he was still a teenager too. "Halfa's... You said there were four of us?" Jason asked cautiously. "Yeah." Danny sat on the other end of the couch. "My sister who is also my clone, and Vlad. Billionaire asshole who's a major creep." "Clone. You have an interesting life."   "That's a lot coming from Red Hood." Jason snorted. "Fair." he paused, proving he'd been listening to all the jumbled up words Danny had been spurting. "Why do you have to sleep with a halfa?" "Aah..." Danny's face went hot again. "So...i..." he paused. "Okay this all sounds bad. I defeated the Ghost King in combat, making me the new Ghost King." Jason brow arched again, "Kudos." "Thank you? Anyway... there's a lot of stupid... add on rules. I didn't make them. Hell i don't even know them all. Some ancient jerk just tells me one at a time. Usually with bad timing which is stupid because he basically is time." "And one of them is fucking?" "Ugh." Danny actually groaned, head falling into his hands. "Someone of my own kind and there's only us four..." he spoke into his hands. "Sucks." "Little bit, yeah." Danny looked up at him, hoping Jason wasn’t actually feeling any of Danny’s nerves or embarrassment. "My friend has a theory that it might not mean sex exactly and might be more of a proximity thing." Jason didn't look overly convinced. "And you decided to try that with some guy you don't know over your clone?" Danny blinked, brain crashing. If he could have just had a sleep over with Dani and avoided all of this... certain ghosts were going to get banished from the Infinite Realm. "Didn't think of that did you?" Jason snickered suddenly and Danny just groaned again. "No.... She's like my sister, i just completely wrote it off." He was going to die... again. This time of embarrassment. Jason laughed softly, the sound not used very often these days. "I mean, i guess i get that. Some times things are easier when you're family isn't involved." "You can say that again..." Danny muttered. Jason leaned back on his spot on the couch, watching Danny with something like amusement in his eyes. He was...so different without the tainted ectoplasm gnawing on his soul. He was finally relaxing. "Well, your Majesty. Would this get me a favor with the king?" Danny's blush stretched down his neck. "Don't call me that. It's too weird." "Nope." Jason was grinning now. "Too much fun. You are way too easy to fluster for a guy that just popped up to ask for sex." "That's not-...!..." Danny winced. "I mean you said no, so that's that." "Changing my mind." Jason said instead, attuned to Danny's look of surprise. Ah, fuck he was definitely able to read Danny now. "Besides. "I have a hundred questions, remember? I'm sure we can mange between rounds." "Rounds?" Danny mouthed the word but no sound came out. Okay, it wasn't a big deal if his heart stopped beating but he was pretty sure it just did. Yeah, it stopped. "O..okay." He attempted, but it just seemed to endear him more as Jason moved again, his time leaning closer. Okay, hot guy in his personal space, he could handle this. It was why he was here.   Jason tugged on Danny’s hair. “It changes. Black to white. That’s cool. Kinda wanna see it more.”

Okay, hot guy in his personal space, he could not handle this. “It uh..yeah. Does that. Alive verses dead i guess. I’ll show you once your ectoplasm is worked out. I don’t see why you wouldn’t gain abilities too once your core is sorted out.”  “You really love to say words without context, don’t you?” Jason said and his amusement was loud.  “I guess... i get ahead of myself.” Danny muttered, unable to make eye contact as Jason slid closer. This was not his first kiss. What was going on with him?  "It’s alright, i’m a quick learner. Besides, i really want to say thank you for you clearing my mind, even if it is temporary." Jason muttered. He’d been screaming for help but no one had ever heard him before.  "We will get that fixed." Danny promised, voice just as quiet. "First thing tomorrow, if you want." "Second thing." Jason said, reaching out to cup Danny's cheek this time before drawing him closer to kiss. Danny didn't think you could see stars in Gotham but he was sure seeing them now. ~~~~  ~~~~

I kinda wonder who’s going to tell Danny he just found a consort. My money’s on Frostbite....  ...As for who tell’s Jason?....That’s Dani barging in to meet her new brother in law  Hope you enjoyed this, feel free to add whatever you want.

Master List 

Instant Eternity

Time travel involving the infinite realms is truly a bizarre thing. Sometimes it follow one set of rules, and sometimes that set of rules may as well not exist. Usually, however, it works in one of two ways, the first is when the time travel is achieved through artificial means such as clockworks portals and allows for the altering of the timeline as one would expect time travel would allow. The other type of time travel is through natural means, portals usually, and it’s just that, Natural. That portal to the past opened up in the past the same moment it did in the present. If you step into the portal in the year 2000 then you already stepped out of the portal hundreds of years ago. It’s A Thing That Already Happened. Danny himself experienced this, as while chasing Vlad through time they fought in the middle of a Roman coliseum and, whoopsy daisy, set a really big fire. A fire which Danny had learned about years before he even had his accident.

So, the infimap can take the user anywhere, anywhen. And the infimap is just that, a map. It doesn’t make new roads, it just drags you across already existing paths. So it is a natural form of time travel, if you use it to go in time to kill your grandfather in order to insure your never born your interference will result in your grandparents falling in love and your birth.

Danny realizes that anytime he needs to heal from a battle or has gone 156 hours without sleeping or eating he can use the infimap to pop back to the past for a few days and then have the map bring back to the “Present”, exactly one second after he left. A three week vacation that lasted one second. At first he’s really wary about using this, worried about accelerated aging or getting lost in the time stream and a hundred other issues. At first.

It’s been months sense the accident. Sam and Tucker have both shot up several inches. Danny, on the other hand, hasn’t grown sense the accident. At all. They fought a ghost who could rapidly age opponents, a single slap turned Tucker into a decrepit old man. The ghost wrapped his hands around Danny’s throat and spent 5 minutes trying to strangle him while Danny bought time for Sam and Tucker to pull off the plan. The sucked him into the thermos, his influence on time ceased so Tucker returned to his proper state. “Jeez it sure is lucky he didn’t try and age me, right guys? Ha ha ha”. Danny gets blasted through a natural portal while making a trip through the zone and spends years trying to get home, not aging a day.

He can’t deny it after that, can’t ignore it. He’s immortal. He’s going to live forever. He’s going to watch his friends and family whither away and die out. He’s going to have to spend the rest of his life wandering from place to place trying not to get outed as the same 14 year old who save someone’s great great grandma 100 years ago.

After having his first middeath crisis, suddenly the only reasons he had to not spend years on end wandering the world and the past is gone, even if he loses the infimap, worst case scenario he’ll just take the long way home. Suddenly, he’s dreading the next 80 years of the “Present”. He decides that if he’s going to watch his friends and family grow old and frail he’s going to make sure it’s takes as long as it possibly could, from his perspective. By the time they’re 20 Danny’s gonna have 200 years under his belt.

He becomes a temporal tourist, hopping into the past every time the late night fights and schoolwork become to much. Spends years in every civilization imaginable, mastering every skill he can, leaving legends in his wake.

I feel like Danny and his adventures do have a lot of potential for story’s, as it’s a pretty good setup for having Danny in any type of time period or historical event for extended periods of time, fighting in the trenches of World War I, exploring the Americas during the era of colonialism, sailing the seas a swashbuckling vigilante pirate. I, however, have most of my related ideas being based around crossovers. So most of that will be in part two, so that people who like to filter out all that can still see this post.

Braided Fates 2

(Masterpost)

Part two of the Danny Phantom stuff for this AU! This thing just keeps getting longer and longer the more I think about it.

Updates might slow down a bit on this side of things, because I've got some events I'm doing fics for and also various real life events that're gonna give me less writing time, so it might be a bit before more gets added. We'll see.

--

Keeping track of days was… difficult, in the Realms.

As a whole, there wasn’t really a way to keep track of time. There wasn’t a sun or moon in the Realms as a whole, adding one to a Haunt was difficult without putting in a lot of time- hah- and focus into it, and that could still be inconsistent since a Haunt responded to the ghost in charge. At least they did in the Infinite Realms, since it was more flexible than the Living Realm. And not even clocks could help, since while they usually followed the passage of time pretty well, they sometimes skipped forwards or backwards at random, and unless you noticed it would make keeping track hard.

Even Clockwork struggled to keep entirely accurate track of time in the Realms, which really said something.

Tucker was determined to figure out a way to keep proper track of things, which Danny thought might be a lost cause, but he had no idea. It’d been a project for three years now, though, which made him think it might be pretty much impossible.

Still, all projects like that had been put to the side for the first while in the Realms. Instead, the three of them all focused on getting settled in. Because of the mess around Realms time, they hadn’t ever stayed in Danny’s Lair before. The most they’d done was visit, entering the Portal and rushing over there in order to look around, and added supplies to the house in case they hadn’t been able to get to any of the go bags in town. But aside from knowing what the place looked like, they hadn’t spent much time in the Lair, or the Haunt as a whole.

So now they were sorting it out to live in. Properly, this time.

With their families taking things so well, the trio had been able to gather all of the various go bags they’d stashed away for themselves and brought them all into the Lair with them, which would make living easier at the very least. They had fake identities and plenty of money as well, so if they needed to leave the Realms and go back to their home dimension for anything, they could, as long as they were careful of the GIW. And with Danny’s parents on their side, there was always a chance that the Anti-Ecto Acts would get removed at some point, and they could go home.

But until then, they were staying here, and had to make the most of it.

The nicest part about them living in Danny’s Lair was that he could make adjustments to things. It was a part of his Haunt, after all, and unlike having a Haunt and Lair in the Living Realm like he had before, the Infinite Realms were flexible.

He was able to make changes to the inside of his Lair, which meant that he could customise their rooms much further than they could do on their own. Sam’s was dark and gothic, Tucker’s was like his one at home but with more space for all his computer equipment, and Danny’s own was more like a planetarium, with his bed floating in the middle of the room and the walls looking like a starry sky.

They’d quickly learned they had to set up a bell to get Danny’s attention when they walked into the room, otherwise he’d be perfectly happy curling into a ball and watching the stars.

Sam and Tucker had wandered in and out of their own rooms for hours, sorting things out and asking Danny to make changes. Danny had kept out of his for the most part, after the first hour or so and the addition of the bell. He kept getting distracted by the stars, so he’d needed to change his room to not have stars on the walls before he unpacked everything he’d brought, putting it away on the floating cases and shelves that made up the room. Instead, while the other two had worked, he’d gone around the hallways to make more adjustments to the house, being careful to stay within shouting range of Sam and Tucker.

Apparently, the layout of the Lair would also respond to his subconscious, as well as his conscious desires and the requests he made.

The house was taller. The Ops Center on the top was as empty as it had always been, but there was more room now. There was an extra bedroom, right at the end of the hall, and when he peered in it was a mirror of his parents’.

They had a basement now.

The living room was currently a mirror of his Living home’s. Danny liked that, right now. It felt like he was at home, rather than hiding in the Realms because he’d half-died once and it’d put everyone in danger by opening the Portal.

That was where he settled, once he’d finished looking around everything. Curled up on the couch, listening to Sam and Tucker go in and out organising things, and sat there focusing on making a star cycle. He’d ended up making both a sun and a moon with a functioning lunar cycle, and patterned the stars to be precisely like the ones over Amity, just because he could. And by that point the other two were done as well, and had come to curl up beside him, all three of them nested together in a big pile like they were at home.

Not that they’d ever done this in that house in Amity, but that was besides the point.

Unpacking had taken up pretty much their entire first day, or what felt kind of like a day, and eventually, Danny knew they’d have to move. Get back to scouting out his Haunt, because while nothing would attack them here it was still a good idea to know what their territory looked like. They’d need to map things out, in case the subconscious changes to the Lair meant that he could also make subconscious changes to the Haunt, and if that happened they’d need to be able to compare the changes.

At some point, they’d need to map out the castle. They knew it was slowly changing to be more Danny’s, rather than Pariah’s- Clockwork had assured them of that- but Danny still wasn’t looking forward to scouting out the entire place. It was huge, after all, made for the Ghost King. It wasn’t as big as his Haunt, obviously, but it was still big and more likely to be dangerous than Danny’s Haunt. Who knew how much time and effort it would to map out the entire place, especially if it kept changing.

They really needed to figure out a communication method, too. Danny had no idea how that worked in the Realms normally, but hopefully if Tucker’s focused obsession on making a working time-keep for the Realms didn’t pan out, he might be able to use something in the system for messages instead. Or maybe Danny could do it. They had the basement lab now, which he could use for his work, depending on what it looked like down there. They could check that out sometime.

And when they’d done all that, there was still gonna be the house to deal with as well. Sure, the house was fine for right now; it being an almost-replica of the Fenton house in Amity, it was definitely functional for living in, but eventually Danny knew it was gonna get cramped. Even just disregarding the fact that the three of them had never lived together before, they were eventually going to need more rooms for things, and that was gonna require talking stuff over.

Like maybe replicating the games room from Sam’s, or the bowling alley, or the movie room. Maybe adding rooms from Tucker’s house as well, just to make things feel more comfortable. Add things outside of the Lair so Sam could have her greenhouses, assuming there was anything they could grow here. They’d done a few experiments with keeping food from getting so ecto-contaminated that it came alive, though they’d never applied it at the Fenton’s, so maybe at some point the kitchen would expand, or they’d gain a big freezer level somewhere.

But all of that was going to need them to sit down, probably with a floor plan of some kind, in order to plan out what they wanted to do. And at the end of their unpacking, all they wanted to do was sit, curled together on the couch, and pretend that they hadn’t had to run away from the only place that had ever been home.

-x-

The next few days went much the same, with them wandering around the house and making little changes, and exploring outside to see what the rest of the Haunt looked like. For the most part, it was a mirror of Amity’s parks, the main ones that the trio had used to visit most often. But none of the plants were quite right; Living Realm plants didn’t seem to like the Realms, Sam had discovered, so while they appeared much like Living plants, there was enough of an ectoplasmic tinge to them that they were warped into something not quite a Living plant.

Which was pretty neat, honestly. They didn’t really do much interesting, aside from the occasional swaying towards them when they walked past- which was really weird with the trees- they just… looked a bit spooky.

Mapping it was still a nightmare, but that’s just how the Realms were. Without the Infini-Map, mapping a place like the Realms wasn’t really possible properly. It was just a case of doing what they could to make something they could follow. Other than that, they made what adjustments they wanted; it wasn’t much, but they moved some of the parks and expanded them into a garden instead, added a greenhouse for Sam, and gave it more of a personal flare.

Then, finally, after what felt like about three days in the Realms, they went to deal with Pariah’s former Lair.

You challenged pokemon trainer Danny!!

Alright guys I have a update for Poke AU but can't draw all of them so here they are!! Starting from Danny's main team :]!

Cosmic♂️ Zoroark (normal/Hisuian) Nature: Timid characteristic: Somewhat stubborn Item: Expert Belt Ability: Illusion Move:

-Bitter Malice -Brick Break -Night Daze -Hyper Voice

First met as a present on Danny's 10th birthday while still Zorua (level 5)

Spooky ♀️ Decidueye Nature: Relaxed characteristic: Often dozes off Item: Leftovers Ability: Overgrow Move:

-Leaf Blade -Feather Dance -Spirit Shackle -Tailwind

Meet the first time as a starter pokemon that was gifted with another Alola starter when he was still a rowlet (level 5)

Plasma Rotom Nuture: Naive characteristic: Impetuous and silly Item: Scope Lens Ability: Levitate Move:

-Discharge -Hex -Thunder Wave -Helping Hand

Meet the first time in the Fenton Works laboratory (level 15)

Marsal Marshadow Nature: Quirky characteristic: Highly curious Item: Black Belt Ability: Technician Move:

-Aura Sphere -Bulk Up -Counter -Phantom Force

First met while hiding in Danny's shadow (level 28)

[nameless :( ]♂️ Ceruledge Nature: Jolly characteristic: Very finicky Item: shell Bell Ability: Flash Fire Move:

-Bitter Blade -Dragon Claw -Swords Dance -Phantom Force

Met the first time at casper high school when he was still a Charcadet (level 1 & hatched egg found by Danny)

[nameless :( ]♂️ Aegislash Nature: Careful characteristic: Likes to relax Item: Bright Powder Ability: Stance Change Move:

-Flash Cannon -King's Shield -Shadow Ball -Psycho Cut

First met at ghost zone when he still a Honedge (level 40)

Danny has lot more pokemons!: Bisharp, Mimikyu, all Hisui starter, Gengar, Froslass, husuian Lilligant & more! If you great can you help me name for them ;w;???

Things to watch out for in Poke AU:

This AU is based on the timeline game play not anime. There's no Ash in this AU sorry guys

AU settings in Unova!

I decided that the pokemon owned here (unless they are from outside Unova or gifted/thrown away by their trainers sad i know) in AU are only pokemon in Unova's national pokedex (BW2)

no Danny can't go on Pokemon adventures officially yet because the protagonist Unova is technically the oldest of all the protagonists in all main timeline games (15-16 years old!) So Danny officially becomes a trainer when he's 15/16 years old :')

AU's main plot:

Very simple 11 12 with series but with pokemon! :]

Plot Hisui:

Let's just say Clockwork wanted Danny to take a vacation from his daily life as a super hero, so here Danny Hisui… Disguised as Danko joined the Galaxy Expedition Team, explored Hisui, researched Hisuian Zorua and Zoroark and met people and new pokemon!

Danny learned a lot about making pokeballs and other equipment. He was taught by Volo and Cyllene very often praised him & She also liked the performance as a member who was very active. He studied more closely about Zoroark & Zorua's abilities so that They could avoid conflicts between humans and Pokemon. in a few moments Danny & Volo were nicknamed "crime boy" by people because sometimes they made lot trouble, on how many occasions Danny found that Volo & Cyllene had a fight and stupidly thought they were kissing, for Danny Volo was a 'big brother' figure because of his nature who is confident and smart sometimes reminds him of Jazz sometimes but Volo is more of an asshole than Jazz and Volo gave him the Zoroark Mask on week 3 at Hisui as a reward for his promotion in Galaxy Expedition Team.

When Danny was going back to his timeline, he said goodbye to everyone and… Should he leave the pokemon he caught here? Clockwork says that he can keep and bring them to his timeline! What a relief! Danny comes back and he realizes he was only gone for 3 days… But he actually spent 3 months at hisui and realized he lost his Zoroark mask! Damn- he can't go back to Clockwork just to take that trivial thing… At the same time Volo who wants to return Danny's zoroark mask only finds snowy land with Danny's footprints.

Meeting Volo's (again):

Danny was exploring the ghost zone to make a map, he didn't invite Sam or Tucker because they were busy so well he was alone exploring the Ghost Zone until suddenly his ship's engine broke down and dropped him to the bottom of the Ghost Zone… When he realized Danny found himself in a place that had very different aura from Ghost zone… The place is full of mirrors and just then Danny is greeted by Giratina who seems quite impressed about Danny species, then Giratina and Danny actively talk a lot they have a lot in common! And Giratina took him somewhere and Danny saw someone familiar… Volo.

Danny & Volo were surprised to see each other… And at the end, after the preamble, Volo told him that he had wanted to destroy the world with Giratina but failed and he was cursed to spend his eternal cursed life, he angry with consuming hatred and obsession with Arcues to survive in the deepest part of the ghost zone… The distorted world, he only interacts with his Pokemon who are also eternally cursed and also Giratina… Sometimes Volo misses a lot of people from his past mass but he realizes he will never meet them again because they are most likely dead sometimes he laments the mask he made for Danny to relieve his boredom… Then he returns Danny's mask to Danny… "I thought I would never return this to you Danko but I'm lucky to be able to return it to you! I will never forget my pather in crime hahahaha!"

In short: Volo Danny escapes from the world of distortion → Volo applies for a job at Fenton Work → Volo becomes the best employee and gets Maddie & Jack's sympathy → VOLO IS ADOPT BY THE FENTON!!!

I forgot to mention that Volo grew Fenton Works business very fast and became the best employee ever!

What next for Poke AU?:

I want add Shauntal in this AU… She a Ghost type elite four… and a writer… fits this au perfectly— & you can ask more if you sent me ask to my ask box pls 👉👈

Oh yeah... Give me your pokemon x dp fanfic i want read it.

CHRISTMAS PROMPTS!!! This happened to me recently so I'd like to see Pomp Pep of the "It's snowing!" Prompt cuz I feel like Danny would rarely see snow in person

I am so sorry this has taken so long! I'm pretty sure this isn't what you wanted, and I am ashamed to say that I really struggled with this prompt for some reason, especially since Danny canonically hates Christmas, and probably winter as a whole because of it. And he lives in the Midwest where it snows a decent amount, so he would actually see a fair bit of snow at least twice a year (there's plenty of snow on the ground in the Christmas episode and also he visits the Far Frozen a couple times in canon too). Basically, I struggled. Please take this schmoop in recompense!

---

Vlad was fuming when they finally arrived back at his manor, exiting the ghost portal with his boots stomping on the floor. Danny followed soon after, equal parts amused and annoyed at his lover's short temper. He rolled his eyes as he landed, transforming back to a human and crossing his arms.

"Vlad, can we please just talk about this?" he huffed, somewhere between exasperating and pleading.

"There is nothing to talk about," Vlad growled back, and Danny knew he was full of shit because the old man had yet to change out of his ghost form and was instead attempting to distract himself by fiddling with ectoplasm samples.

"Uh-huh." Danny sighed. He dropped his arms, running a hand through his hair as the other was placed on his hip. "I don't get what you're so worked up about! It was just a stupid prank, and you know how they all are! Especially when Walker's there..." Danny grumbled because, of course, Walker had to be there to enforce the rules of Christmas tradition. "He watches everyone like some extra creepy hawk when it comes to the stupid mistletoe thing. It doesn't mean anything!"

"Certainly seems like it meant something," Vlad stated. He placed his samples back in their case with a little more force than the delicate test tunes should really take, turning back to Danny with glowing red eyes set in an accusing glare. "Which, by the way, you didn't tell me you were so chummy with the Master of All Time."

Danny frowned, a glare of his own leveled at Vlad. "Uh, I did tell you? Like, a few years ago?" He crossed his arms again. "Clockwork's just a good friend, I don't get why you're so"-

"Just a friend who kisses you at the first opportunity that presents itself?" Vlad sneered, cutting him off. "Oh, yes, such a wonderful friend! He was practically leering at you the whole time we were there!"

"He was not!" Danny shouted back. His own temper was rising quickly with the accusations.

Vlad was practically snarling now. "And you! You were so quick to fall into his arms when he grabbed you! You were practically swooning for him!"

Hurt and guilt were bubbling in an uncomfortable mixture in his stomach as Vlad shouted at him. And the night had started out so well! They had gone to the annual Christmas Truce party in the Ghost Zone, and all their enemies and frenemies gathered at Ember's Island in the Zone. She had collected a tolerable mix of classic and hard rock Christmas songs into one expansive playlist, and the drinks had been spiked with enough alcohol to loosen up even the most tense of ghosts (Danny and Walker). Vlad and Danny arrived together; they mingled, danced, and performed bad karaoke.

All in all, Danny had enjoyed himself immensely. The Truce parties were always more fun with Vlad, and ever since they got together, he actually looked forward to some Christmas-y celebration. Vlad didn't celebrate the same as his own family (which is to say he didn't fucking argue over pointless Santa shit and ruin the whole damn holiday), so Danny actually found himself appreciating the holiday a little more with each year they spent together.

Clockwork had even shown up, stopping in for his usual five minutes or so like he did every year to remind everyone he still existed and to steal some spiked eggnog. Danny always enjoyed seeing the old time keeper, and getting a chance to talk with him outside of his lair was a bonus.

Maybe it was his fault for not paying attention to where they were chatting. Maybe it was his fault for mentioning to Vlad a few years ago that he once harbored a small crush on the Time Keeper. Maybe it was his fault for drinking a little too much eggnog and letting random ghosts kiss his cheeks under the various mistletoe placed in all the doorways of Ember's lair. He'd taken advantage of it enough over the course of the night to kiss Vlad as much as the older ghost would allow, illiciting cat-calls from everyone around them to placate the man after each platonic smooch to the cheek. It was definitely not his fault when Walker had appeared over him as he was laughing with Clockwork, the stern ghost's arms crossed as he glared pointedly at them. Danny had gazed back up at him, confused and definitely drunk and uncomprehending until Walker's glowing eyes flicked up to the chunk of red green above them. Danny's face went red, and he laughed a little for forgetting the rules. He waved Walker off, turned to Clockwork to place a friendly kiss to his old friend's cheek, only to suddenly meet warm lips when Clockwork abruptly turned his head to kiss him for real.

Danny may have squeaked, and it may have come out as a bit of a moan, and the other ghosts in the room cat-called them and cheered, especially when Clockwork's arm went around Danny's waist to pull him closer. Clockwork kissed him like Vlad did, hungry and desperate, but he thankfully kept his tongue to himself - Danny absolutely would have moaned had he slipped in some tongue. His years old crush came rushing right to the front of his drunken brain, and he kissed back, Clockwork's lips firm against his own, his hand moving up to clutch a robe-clad shoulder. The old ghost was solid and strong against him, but not as warm as he was used to. Intelligent thought returned almost as soon as it left when Clockwork kissed him and Danny pushed the old ghost away, staring with widened eyes as Clockwork gazed back with that infuriatingly all-knowing smirk. He glanced over Danny's shoulder with that same smirk, glanced down at Danny. He then placed another quick kiss to Danny's lips, winked, and then was gone with a wave of his staff. Danny was left blinking in confusion, only jostled out of his thoughts by hands clapping his shoulders and teasing jeers going in one ear and out the other.

It wasn't until Kitty pulled him aside as he was looking around for Vlad in a confused daze to tell him the older halfa flew off in a rage that he sobered up almost instantly, calling out a quick good-bye to everyone to chase his lover back through the Ghost Zone with worry tearing him up from the inside out.

"Vlad, please..." Danny started, the fight already leaving him. He already hated the holiday enough, and to add another fight to his memories of it was quickly souring his mood, especially when it seemed he was only just starting to get over his issues with it, too. He wrapped his arms around himself. "I'm sorry, okay? It didn't mean anything!"

"How can I believe that?!" Vlad roared back. His fist banged on the table, and Danny jumped, taking a step back as the anger Vlad carefully hid these days came bubbling to the forefront. "Every year, you let them all grope at you and kiss you, and... and touch you! You let them do it! And tonight, you kiss them, and they kiss you, and you have the nerve to come over and kiss me like you're not all but flaunting yourself to them! And you just... let Clockwork have you like that?! He's allowed to kiss you in front of me, like I don't mean anything to you -"

"You mean everything to me!" Danny screamed. Vlad shut up, his jaw snapping closed with an audible click as his red eyes widened. There were tears in Danny's eyes, threatening to spill over, but he grit his teeth, glaring at Vlad and willing himself not to break over something like this. "You mean the world to me, Vlad," he stated again, calmer this time. His fists clenched at his sides. "Here I am, dumb and insecure and scared all the time, afraid you're gonna leave me because of some stupid thing I did because I couldn't bother to think for two seconds, and you're..." He took a shaky breath. "You're so smart... You're strong and handsome, and you have so much money, and you can have anyone you want! I barely passed high school without your help, and I'm not any of those things! I can hold my own in a fight, sure, but without my ghost half I'm a weak, insecure mess, and for some reason you still look twice at me!"

The tears spilled over, and Danny was quick to rub them away. Vlad stared back at him, his eyes wide. Danny couldn't look at him. "I don't know why Clockwork kissed me like that..." he murmured, changing to his ghost form. "But he knows things, especially things he shouldn't, and he never does anything without reason, so whatever his reason is, it must be good." He laughed bitterly, staring down at his white boots. "Or maybe he was just being selfish for once because he knows I'll never leave you..." He said it so quietly, he wasn't sure Vlad heard it, but at this point, he didn't care. Danny sighed. He glanced up at Vlad from under his bangs, his feeling dull and wet. "I'm not gonna fight with you about this. Come find me when you want to actually talk."

He floated up towards the ceiling, stopping only at the call of Vlad's quiet, "Daniel..." When he glanced back down, Vlad had a hand held out as if to catch his tail. Vlad visibly struggled for words. "It's cold out..." he finally muttered.

Danny stared back at him dully. Then he formed a ball of light blue energy in his hand, pulling directly from his core to aim a blast of ice at Vlad's feet, freezing the man to the floor. Vlad gasped, stumbling in place as he tried to regain his balance. "Thaw yourself out," Danny said, and he phased through the floor.

The manor was chilly as he floated up, and outside was just below freezing. It was dark, the sky completely shrouded in clouds. Danny flew to the roof, barely aware of the temperature as he sat, knees pulled to his chest and arms wrapped around them. He rested his head on them, gazing out over the countryside, the lights of Madison glowing under the overcast sky.

He didn't know how long he sat there. He didn't notice the temperature drop further or the winds pick up speed. He didn't notice the passing of time at all until warmth settled at his side, Danny shivering at the sudden temperature change. He turned his head just enough to watch Vlad make himself comfortable next to him, a veritable furnace of heat through his suit. Danny shivered again. He turned his gaze back to the distant city.

They were quiet as they sat there, the night even quieter around them. Danny refused to be the first to break it.

Eventually, Vlad sighed. "I'm sorry..." he muttered. He sounded broken, but Danny still didn't look at him. He pulled his legs closer to his chest. "I get... jealous..." There was a rustling as Vlad ran a hand through his hair.

Danny snorted. "You think?" he grumbled into his arms. "You're jealousy is legendary at this point."

"I know..." Vlad sighed again. "But I am sorry. I didn't mean to start a fight. But I can't stand watching you flirt with every ghost who gives you even a micron of attention!"

Danny rolled his eyes. "Then just say that!" he exclaimed. He lifted his head to level an icy glare at the older halfa. Vlad looked confused, and Danny almost wanted to laugh. "Just tell me you don't like if I'm doing something, and I'll stop! You don't have to sit there and suffer in silence if I'm going overboard being friendly with others until you can't hold in your anger anymore. You're the most jealous man I've ever met, but you need to realize that I'm not going anywhere."

Danny blew out a sharp breath. "I'm sorry about Clockwork. I only meant to kiss his cheek the same as anyone else. I was gonna come back and kiss you just like I had been, but I got caught up and confused in the moment." He leveled a teasing grin at Vlad. "He kisses almost like you do, you know."

Vlad bristled next to him, and Danny couldn't help but laugh. "I should certainly hope I kiss better than him."

Danny laughed again. "More satisfying at least," he teased. Vlad open his mouth to retort, glaring, but Danny leaned in, kissing him quiet. It was a soft kiss, sweet and as satisfying as he claimed - nothing like how Clockwork had kissed him earlier in the evening. He nibbled Vlad's lower lip, opening his mouth to brush their tongues together when Vlad asked for entrance. Warmth filled his belly, settling the sour feelings from earlier. Danny loved it.

He pulled away- not very far. Just enough to brush their noses together and breath warm puffs of air against each other's lips. Vlad rested their foreheads together, sighing. "Daniel..." he murmured, and emotion clawed up Danny's throat, words he had never spoken before resting on his tongue.

"I love you..." he murmured back, soft and sincere. He watched under lidded eyes as Vlad's own widened. He gave him a small grin. "I think we might be a few years overdue, but... I do. I love you, fruitloop."

He found himself suddenly in Vlad's lap, impossibly warm arms wrapped tight around his waist. Vlad buried his face in Danny's shoulder, his own shoulders shaking, and Danny wrapped his arms around them, holding the man close. "Never leave me..." Vlad muttered. "Don't leave me, never leave me, and I'll love you as long as you'll have me!" Vlad whispered those three little words over and over again, and Danny couldn't help but smile, burying his face in black hair as a giddying feeling erupted like butterflies in his belly.

"We need to work on your confessions..." he stated, nuzzling raven hair. Then he pulled away, forcing Vlad to lean back with gloved hands cupping his blue face. Danny smiled. "I love you. I'm not going anywhere."

Vlad barely managed to respond with an "I love you, too" before Danny was kissing him, hungry and sweet and loving and desperate and everything in between. Vlad moaned under him, and he didn't pull away until he felt drops of cold settle on his cheek. Their cheeks were flushed as they leaned back. Little white flakes stood out in Vlad's hair, quickly melting.

"It's snowing..." Danny mumbled. Then he was grinning, sticking out his tongue to catch one. When he glanced back down, Vlad was smiling, softer than he ever had before.

"I love you..." he murmured to the boy, and Danny's cheeks flushed further. "Merry Christmas, Daniel."

Danny kissed him again.

---

I haven't edited this, I just busted it out real quick, I'm so sorry!

I literally do not know how to use Tumblr in a way that matters, but I am here to scream into the void and beg for someone to take interest in this stupid fucking dp x p5R crossover please

Danny phantom x persona 5 Royal

Danny would be the death confidante for Akechi, since Akechi would have his own set obviously, he actually doesn't have all the major Arcana tho, only

the tower:Shido

Death: Danny

Judgment: sai

The fool: joker

The hermit : futaba ?(much later)

Akechi himself is the justice card still even from his own perspective.

Danny would be the ace of hearts for joker

Futaba being Goro's half-sister is canon here because I said so.

Also, Danny is 16, akechi is 18 here, because,,,,little brother vibes

Akechi enrolls Danny into jokers school, he meets Sumire and they hang out a bit, which is how he meets joker and through joker, Futaba omg Danny Futaba and Sumi cause the most chaos as a trio, perfect

Akechi, Yusuke, and Hifumi all go to the same school, but because akechi is a 3rd year they don't interact pretty much at all.

Danny upon meeting joker for the first time: you should date my dad actually

As a timeline note, Danny shows up when the actual pt are working on Makoto's palace so that I can have my space station time, but also because,,,,hehe plot.

Danny and akechi making each other realize they were victims of extreme abuse

Akechi much later allowing Danny to absolutely fuck his reputation to fuck with Shido, but also because they're teaching each other how to just be kids. God mutual healing for them pls

Danny upon telling akechi he's king of the infinite realms like: so even if you die, you're still stuck with me

A Kechi not knowing why or how this American teenager is speaking fluent Japanese to him

Danny who doesn't know he's speaking Japanese, or even that he's in Japan for like the first MONTH he's there

Ohya is the one that gets the shot of a Kechi and Danny in shibuya, them trying to sell Danny as akechis "son" is so so funny to me because he's literally only 2 years younger than him, so it's not possible, but they sure did run the article

This is not a Danny gets yeeted to a new universe au the metaverse is just a smaller dimension that exists right between the infinite realms and earth, so in a way ghosts are just shadows after death, shadows form from the self within the self, and if they progress for long enough, once that person dies, their shadow becomes a ghost, it's why even though not all ghosts are evil, there's a lot of them that are

Tucker and Futaba would either be absolute best friends who already knew each other through the hacking community or worst enemies and I can't decide what's better

Futaba is the one to tell tucker and sam that Danny is alive and ok, because Danny is stupid and doesn’t think to tell them

Danny and Akechi paint each other's nails as a form of bonding

Ghost king Danny, ghost speak, blacklight ectoplasm, I just think they're neat

A half written first chapter for this stg I am not writing more someone else do it please

Danny ends up yeeted into Japan after the last episode of his original series, except it didn't go as well as canon, his parents had only faked their acceptance, in all truth once they'd gotten home, he'd been subjected to months of experimenting, jazz had left for college soon after and didn't know anything and Danny, poor Danny, was letting this all happen to himself because he had convinced himself it was out of love, for the greater good. Eventually, he was broken out of this cycle by his friends who'd spent this whole time trying to free him, and once they did they beelined it for the ghost portal, to get as far away as they could, they took Danny to clockwork as they assumed he'd know best what to do next, and he did. He sent Danny to akechi and his friends back to their homes.

Danny, now with extreme PTSD and lots of new scars to go with it, is completely out of it when he first bumps into akechi. He just kinda ends up in the middle of Akechi's living room, staring at his hands and silently crying, and akechi, who just got home from school and watched this child fall out out a portal onto his carpet, considers calling the police for a second before realizing if he filed a report like that it would absolutely fuck his image, headlines like "detective prince akechi finally snapped?" "Child star gone crazy!" "Young detective claims child 'fell out of portal' more on this at 9" and ultimately decides that he will deal with this problem himself. Armed with his (fake because it's for the metaverse and legally he can't own one) gun akechi slowly approaches him and nudges the back of his head, and suddenly his problem disappears, quite literally, into thin air.

Danny, who absolutely panicked at being broken out of his meltdown by the feeling of cold metal against the back of his head (hmmmm how many things could this remind him of, so so many) had gone invisible and fuckin booked it to the closest corner, his mind not clear enough to get him any further, and his energy not high enough to sustain the invisibility. He was curled in a ball arms crossed out in front of him in an attempt to shield himself.

Akechi snaps to attention as suddenly the child is back but in a completely different location, seemingly much more afraid than before. Akechi thinks about it for a moment before lowering his gun and kneeling onto one knee from where he stood, raising his hands in a sign of surrender, to try and show he no longer means harm.

"Hey, it's ok, can I get you some water?"

Clearly being on the offensive wasn't going to make progress and now akechi was much more interested in this boy than he had been.

He runs through a list of things he was taught to do to deescalate a situation. Try basic questions, offer reassurance, space, and make sure not to move too quickly or unpredictably, that last one will be a little hard since his guest is in an unknown place so no matter what he does it'll be unpredictable.

Danny lowered his hands which had started shaking, waiting for the hurt, the next step, something, after hearing the older boy in front of him speak, he said something about water? Danny thought for a moment, this is all a trap, or not real, or both, or maybe hey, just maybe he finally actually died. In which case, the actions he was now taking meant nothing anyways. He opened his mouth to speak but only a hoarse impression of an attempt at speech came out, so instead, he nodded. He was so entirely unsure of his situation, and the tears wouldn't stop, god he just wanted to help, he did everything they asked, so why did it never sto- Danny closed his eyes painfully tight and repeated the word no to himself mentally in an attempt to stop his thoughts from going where they were.

Akechi winced at the sound of the boy's voice, could it even be called that, but took note of the small nod and stood to go retrieve water. Once he had the drink in hand he stood about 5 feet away from the boy and spoke again.

"Can I come over and hand this to you?" He needs to make sure not to send him further into whatever sort of attack he was having, so being overly careful about all his actions was the least he could do.

Danny he was just barely starting to regain his ability to actually breathe, shook his head no rapidly, but had no idea how to communicate his wants without his voice.

"I'll just set it on the floor right here then and go back to where I was"

Was this man an angel? How did he know what Danny wanted, when he hadn't spoken a word? Danny gave an agreeing shake to his head this time and waited for the man to go back and sit down before essentially crawling over to the cup. He relished in the feeling of the water running down his throat, of the concept of kindness being shown to him, for the first time in months.

Akechi waited for the boy to calm fully and seem more at ease before saying he was going to get bedding for him, he'd set him up on the couch, and get him some food (not that akechi had much to offer, but he was sure he could find something) and letting him rest for the night.

What a strange fucked up situation this was, akechi wasn't sure how to feel about any of it, but he did have a growing sense of pity for the boy. He'd clearly been through something, and the whole falling out of thin air onto his floor definitely didn't help. Goro didn't exactly want to subject this child to the things he himself had been through when Shido was experimenting with his abilities, so he'd keep him confined to his house for now while he sorted it all out. On the other hand, akechi doesn't trust this unknown at all, so he'd call in sick to school in the morning, and take a few days off, his grades shouldn't suffer too much given his aptitude for memorization, but it wouldn't exactly be pleasant either.

Speaking of unpleasant things, akechi checks his phone for the time, and looks at the news before sighing and softly telling the boy he was going to sleep, and pointing out where his room and the bathroom were in case either was needed. Goro also knew in the back of his mind somewhere that telling this stranger who had literally disappeared and reappeared right in front of his eyes earlier, where he slept wasn't exactly the brightest idea, but he also knew he wouldn't be sleeping tonight, too busy researching and trying to figure anything he could out. He'd even need to be careful of what he looked into though, considering the kind of mistrust and surveillance Shido had of him, wouldn't want to tip him off now would we?

Danny took the bedding given to him and hulled himself up in a corner ready to stay awake the rest of the night on high alert, or he would have if it wasn't suddenly a completely different time of day, Danny swears he only blinked but in that moment his body must have shut down, after such a long period of abuse and lost sleep, it must have deemed this a safe enough environment to sleep. What had woken him up though was the sound of something falling, he assumes it came from the kitchen nearby, but he hadn't been conscious enough on the outside to process anything else that happened, in fact, he'd almost immediately started panicking again.

Goro poked his head into the living room to see the boy wide awake and staring into nothing with a sense of panic. He wanted to apologize, but he felt speaking and startling the kid out of that state would only make it worse. Maybe he himself had needed to sleep more than he'd imagined though, because as bad at cooking as he was, dropping a frying pan was a new one. What was he even doing with the pan to begin with? He couldn't remember now, the pounding sound had rattled his brain too much.

because I could not stop for death

because I could not stop for death / he kindly stopped for me / the carriage held but just ourselves / and immortality ~ Emily Dickinson

Danny Fenton was dying, properly this time.

Somehow, in the back of his head and in his worst nightmares, he knew it would end this way: bleeding on the floor of his parents’ lab where it had all began. He was so hot he felt like his skin was on fire, blood and ectoplasm were dripping all over him and his lungs and heart were working overtime to try in vain to keep him alive a moment longer. He’d imagined at the time that there would be more screaming but death, in the end, was turning out to be a quiet little affair. A lonely table set for one.

“Danny, Danny come on, you-you gotta slow down your breathing, just relax, for me, please,” Sam moaned, more than making up for his lack of noise. She was shaking and touching him all over, his chest, his face, his hair. Normally she jumped right into action but she had to know, deep down, that there was nothing she could do. All that was left was to watch her panic and cry, it wasn’t his favorite image. 

“Vlad!” He heard Tucker scream cry into the phone, “please it’s Tucker, Danny’s dying I think. The Fentons had some new invention, something about his core, please we don’t know what to do!” 

Ugh Vlad, he was probably going to be so happy Danny was on his way out. He wasn’t looking much forward to his last images being his archenemy gloating. Tucker hung up and reached down to grasp Danny’s hand so hard it hurt. “Don’t worry dude, Vlad’s coming. He knows so much about you half ghosts that you’ll be fixed up on no time.” Right, Danny was already dead. If calling Vlad, feeling like he did something, helped Tucker move on then he’d deal with it.

Danny tilted his head to the side where Sam’s fingernails were carding through his hair. It was getting harder to see with the blood pouring out of his eyes but he looked at her, and tried to memorize her face. He’d never been able to tell her how much he loved her, that any day spent with her was a blessing. Tucker too, his best bro and a part of his soul. His best friends in the whole wide world, through thick and thin. God, he was going to miss them.

“Glurk,” he said, trying to convey those feeling but the fluids in his mouth and airway made it impossible. “Blerh.”

“Shh shh shh,” Sam soothed, “it’s okay, don’t try to talk.”

“Daniel!” He heard Vlad’s voice shriek as he materialized in front of the portal. Sam and Tucker were violently pushed out the way. Danny wanted to be angry at his loved ones being taken away in his final moments but anger was for the living, he barely had the energy to breathe. This death was too long and too short all at once. He made eye contact with Vlad who all at once lost the frantic edge to his tone and and instead knelt on the floor. “Oh my dear boy. What did they do to you?”

“What is going on?” Sam demanded, shoving her way back in. Danny was glad, he could see again like this. “Why aren’t you doing something!”

“There’s nothing to be done,” Vlad said in a flat, monotone, he picked up one of Danny’s hands and patted it gently. “His core is dying, it’s like a ghost’s heart. It contains their very essence, it is from which everything they are comes from. If Jack and Maddie somehow disrupted it then there’s nothing anyone can do to save him.”

“But he’s human too,” Tucker defended, grabbing Danny’s other hand. His human warm skin burned but the contact felt so good, he twitched his fingers closer to his friend’s. “He-he doesn’t need a core, he’s already got a heart. So, so he doesn’t have powers, we can do normal again.”

“You-” Vlad hissed before taking a calming breath. “The accident that made Daniel like this irreparably altered him. His core was as much a part of keeping him alive as his other organs, without it, his body is shutting down.” Vlad turned down to look Danny in the eye and saw true, genuine grief in those hateful red eyes. 

“I cannot imagine the agony you are going through, I’m so sorry. I’d say it will be over soon but,” a hitch that sounded almost like a sob if it was coming from anyone other than Vlad. “But you’ve hovered on the edge of death for years, son, and you’ve always been such a fighter. You have minutes at most but those minutes are an eternity when you’re suffering.”

Sam and Tucker’s sobbing blended together in the background, Vlad was saying something with a miserable, stunned expression. The swirling of the portal in the background seemed louder than anything, louder than his heart beat pounding and pounding as it ran it’s last race. 

“Daniel, Danny,” he focused his eyes back on Vlad who had a stubborn, unhappy set to his brow. “Do you want me to make the pain stop? An ectoblast to your chest will end your life instantly.”

“Don’t you dare touch him,” Sam shrieked, coming back into view and looking like she was trying to fight Vlad off. “You do anything to him and I’ll kill you!” Tucker just sat and stared at him, like he too was trying memorize Danny’s face.

“It’s a mercy, Samantha or do you want his last moments on earth to be drowning on the blood in his lungs.”

“Sam, he has a point. I don’t- I don’t think we can fix this.”

“No! No we always fix things, I’ll do it myself if I have to!”

Danny’s vision was starting to go, more black than anything else. He closed his eyes and readied himself for the inevitable. 

“Time Out,” Danny opened his eyes and found he was no longer in pain. He was standing up and apart from where he’d previously been lying. Sam had her hands in Vlad’s face and the older hybrid was snarling something at her. Tucker was midmotion trying to stand up, presumably to get Sam but the three of them were frozen in the moment. Danny turned and found Clockwork floating, looking very out of place in his parents lab. “Good evening, Danny.”

“You that short on cash that you work part time as a grim reaper?” Danny quipped out of habit. He looked down at his body and grimaced a bit, that wasn’t a pretty sight. No doubt traumatizing for Tucker and Sam. God how were they going to explain this to his parents? “Gonna ferry me across the River Styx? I don’t have two pennies but I think I have a bloodied $10 on me.”

“You’re core is dying and you have 17 seconds left in this world before all your organs give out and finish the process you began when you turned on your parent’s ghost portal,” Clockwork explained as he changed into child form. 

“O-okay,” Danny said shakily, trying to be brave even when he was so, so scared. He was going out whether he wanted it or not but he refused to leave crying. “Nice of you to come say goodbye then but, uh but unless you have something to say then you should let me go back. No one knows better than me that you can’t outrun death. Thanks but I’m uh I’m ready.”

Clockwork stared at him for a bit, not sure how long, time was weird like this but he changed forms a few times. “You’re quite the remarkable young man, Danny Fenton.”

“Uh thanks,” Danny added, once more looking at his body which had, according to Clockwork, a 17 second expiration date. “What’s going to happen? Am I going to become a ghost? Does heaven or hell exist for someone like me?”

“I don’t get to decide what happens, I merely see options,” Clockwork stated easily, taking his time. “If you die naturally you’ll become ghost, a mere shadow of who you are now and one who would fade fairly quickly. You don’t have strong enough anger or regrets to tie you in the real world for long.” Not great but okay he supposed, hell for his friends and family though. “You could let Plasmius deliver his mercy kill, destroying what’s left of your ghost core and ensuring you do not come back.” Better, probably won’t help the Fruitloop’s instability but he can’t save everyone.

“That one comes with it’s own caveat but I’ll get to that in a moment,” Clockwork explained. “There is a third option where you get up off the floor and walk away.” Danny blinked then looked back at his body which certainly wasn’t walking anywhere but into a plush casket. Clockwork opened his hands and the Ghost King’s Crown materialized in his hands. “If you accept your claim to the King’s Cown, it will revitalize your core and your life would be saved.”

Danny blinked.

“By sealing Pariah Dark, you won by proxy and established a legitimate claim to the throne. The Zone has been without a king for millennia, most have forgotten the old rules. Those who remembered were not too keen on a half-ghost child assuming leadership and kept you in the dark. If Plasmius ends your life then your claim transfers over to him, which he is aware of. It had been his plan all along to trick you into defeating Pariah so he could steal the Crown from you at a later date, a much easier opponent.”

Danny’s mind was overloaded with information, he didn’t know what to focus on first. He stared at his 17 seconds from death face and tried to process it all. Crown? Claim? Vlad?

“Of course,” Clockwork tutted, “he didn’t plan on your dying and in such a gruesome fashion. If he kills you and takes your claim, he would spend his remaining years ruling the Ghost Zone in a just, controlled fashion for your memory. He destroys all the stable portals and keeps the ghost and human worlds separate.” Clockwork became and old man and titled his head, “it’s not a bad timeline, all things considered.”

“And if I take it?” Danny asked quietly.

“You’re compassionate, brave and motivated, you have all the makings of a revolutionary king,” Clockwork smiled. “The Zone would experience and unprecedented era of peace, there would be positive interactions between human and ghosts for the first time since life and death split into two. Your name would spoken with reverence for the rest of time.”

“But I don’t want to be king,” Danny frowned.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Clockwork stated. “Which is why I am giving you the choice. If you pass peacefully there will be no one to claim the Crown and life will continue on, ghost attacks and all. If Plasmius kills you, he becomes an effective but unmemorable king. If you take the Crown, you can get the chance to tell Sam and Tucker how much you love them.”

Danny rubbed at his face, he didn’t want to die but he’d be sealing away his entire future with a move like this. He didn’t even know if the Crown would let him go with death, maybe he’d die and be stuck as the Ghost King until his core finally gave out lord in who knows how long. Eternity was an awful long time to carry such a responsibility. He couldn’t bring himself to ask, too afraid of the answer.

“Is there ever a timeline I became an astronaut?” He asked instead. Clockwork hummed, seemingly unsurprised by Danny’s non-sequitur. 

“Yes, in one of the few universes where you never walked into the portal. You never go into space what with human politics putting a halt on the programs but you work for NASA. You leave Amity Park at 17 and don’t come back save for your parents’ dual funeral.” He paused and Danny felt read down to his very bones, “from the moment you became half ghost you were always heading for this moment. The circumstances varied but it always came down to you and the Crown. Time is straining to continue, to see how this drama plays out. Will you accept it and all the joy and grief that comes with it?”

Danny looked over at Vlad, still mid-sneer but there was a scared desperation in his face. He and Vlad sniped at each other all the time but Danny didn’t really hate him and he didn’t think Vlad did either. Leaving him alone, plus making him be king was a heavy burden to put on his enemy. 

Sam and Tuck probably wouldn’t recover from this, he’d put them through so much already but he just knew that they’d never be the same. Could he do that to them? Take the easy way out and leave them to suffer? Mom and Dad didn’t deserve to come home to a dead son, the truth would come out and they’d never forgive themselves. Jazz certainly wouldn’t, she was 2 states over at University but he could already hear her angry, grief-stricken screams. 

Death, death was quiet. It was quiet and merciful and sad, but it was also easy. And Danny Fenton had never once taken the easy route. He reached out and took and the crown before shakily placing it on his head. He gasped, throwing his head back as his core swelled, taking up residence once more right next to his heart. Clockwork smiled, looking like the cat who ate the canary. 

“The Crown of Fire, pardon me the Crown changes with each core, the Crown of Ice is now yours as is the Zone. Your reign begins now but so too does the rest of your life. People are waiting for you. Time in.” Danny slammed back into awareness on the floor of his parents’ lab, the floor he’d almost died on twice. 

He sat up as cold radiated off his body, causing frost to crawl down his arms and along the floor. Sam, Tucker and Vlad, who’d been frozen up until now, jumped back to life. There was a new, familiar weight on his head that he didn’t dare acknowledge. 

He squeezed his eyes shut and said a silent goodbye to a quiet, normal life. It wouldn’t be all bad, he could be happy like this but the Crown still felt like a iron manacle around his neck. But he got used to the ghost powers, he could get used to this too. Maybe one day he won’t look at the stars and say ‘what if?’

“Danny!” Sam shouted, throwing herself into his arms soon followed by Tucker. Their warm weight, their relieved sobs, their shaky breaths in his air, now this was something worth living for. He squeezed them tightly.

“But how dude, you were at death’s door!” Tucker asked, still not letting go.

“You accepted the Crown,” Vlad said evenly, “I wasn’t aware you even knew about your claim. Who told you?”

“You don’t know everything, Vlad,” Danny sighed, sitting himself upright. Ugh his shirt was covered in blood and ectoplasm. He needed to trash these clothes before his parents freaked. And find a way to hide the floating ice crown on his head. 

“Even an old man can be surprised every now and again,” Vlad said wearily. He stood up to his full height before startling Danny by dipping down to one knee. “Then allow me to be the first to welcome my new king and wish him well.”

“I thought you wanted this,” Danny questioned.

“I do, I did,” Vlad said, unusually off balance. “To be quite honest, I’m not sure how to feel about it but, right now, I’m just immeasurably happy you’re alive, little badger. Now I best be off, enjoy your kingdom, my liege, I’ll be sure to come bother you some time soon.” Vlad disappeared in a swirl of pink leaving just him, Sam and Tucker still clinging to him.

Danny may have a kingdom, a job he didn’t want and his whole life decided in a spur of the moment choice, but he also had something very important. He squeezed his friends tightly.

“I love you guys, thank you for being my friends even though I have the worst ideas for activities. Dying? On a Sunday night? How lame is that?” Sam laughed, a bit hysterical but it was real and it made Danny feel weightless. 

“Don’t do that again, buddy,” Tucker breathed into his shoulder. “So you gonna explain what just happened and why you’re apparently the Ghost King or something?”

“Yeah, yeah I will but let’s get changed first. Mom and Dad will be home soon and I think I’m going to need to have a conversation with them about my new job.” 

Solutions to Nonlinear Equations

For @currentlylurking for the Phic Phight.  :)

.

“Ancients, Vlad.  I’m not rejecting you because I’m a rebellious teenager and you’re an adult, I’m rejecting you because you’re incredibly creepy.”

Vlad sniffed in what he hoped was an aristocratic manner and raised an eyebrow, minutely adjusting his grip on Daniel to keep him pinned to the floor.  

“We’re human-ghost hybrids, Daniel.  I’d hoped that you’d have realized by now that we are meant to be ‘creepy.’”

Daniel squirmed and began to mutter into the carpet. “Clockwork never acts like this, I’m fine with him—”

Vlad pulled back as if burned.  He hadn’t heard that name in—in—

In a long time.  

Years.  

The thought was almost expelled from his head when Daniel managed to elbow him in the jaw hard enough to make him see stars. Before he knew it, Daniel had slipped from his grasp and zoomed away.  

Whatever aspersions Vlad cast on Daniel’s mastery of his ghostly abilities, the boy was fast.  When he put his mind to escaping instead of picking a fight, he managed it more often than not, to Vlad’s great frustration.  Hence Vlad’s usual strategy of needling the younger half-ghost until fighting was the only thing on Daniel’s mind.  

He set down on a nearby roof.  There went his plans for the day.  Which, admittedly, had consisted of distracting Daniel while his ghostly minions set up a nasty surprise for him at the school, hence making him fail his test, which would, in turn, convince Maddie and Jack to let Vlad set Daniel up with a tutor, something he had suggested to them earlier, and—

Well.  Daniel would find them, now, no doubt.  

Ah, well.  

He had more important things on his mind, now.  Such as, how in two worlds did Daniel know Clockwork?  Because Daniel never just said things like that.  He barely knew anything about ghost culture.  He wouldn’t know to bring up obscure, secretive, ghost historical figures.  He wouldn’t know what that particular name would mean to Vlad.  

Tongues of fire flared out of his fingers, bringing a measure of stability to the gyrations of his core and his emotions.  

Daniel knew Clockwork.  And, it seemed, met him with some regularity.  Enough for him to compare his actions to Vlad’s.  

Would that ghost never be satisfied with ruining Vlad’s life?  Was he not satisfied with—

He cut off the thought, shaking his head.  Never mind that.  

What Vlad needed to do was find Clockwork.  Which meant inducing Danny to go to him at a time when Vlad when Vlad could follow.  Which meant determining when he had visited Clockwork in the past.  An undertaking to be sure.  

He closed his eyes and teleported to his lab beneath his mansion.  

“Maddie!” he called out, even before his body had fully reformed.  

The hologram flickered to life with a faint crackled from the projector.  “What is it, sugarpie?” it asked with a smile.

“Review the audio recordings from Fentonworks,” ordered Vlad.  “Search for the term ‘Clockwork.’  Report findings to me.”

“Sure thing, honey!”

Vlad had to review the cheerfulness settings on the Maddie program.  Maddie was upbeat, but not that upbeat.  This was almost sickly sweet.  

He threw himself into a nearby chair.  

Clockwork.  He thought he’d never hear that name again.  Not after he’d been literally and figuratively ghosted by him.  

He telekinetically pulled a book off his shelf. He ran his fingers over the leather tooling on the cover.  The book had been given to him by Clockwork, years ago, when he was still in that hospital.

Clockwork had been the one to first show him the Ghost Zone, and all the wonders in it.  Clockwork had been his friend, his only friend, through that long, agonizing hospital stay. He had been supportive, wonderful, kind. He visited often, though not on a regular schedule.  He’d helped Vlad ride out the waves of misery and anger that so often threatened to overwhelm him.  

Then, without warning, nothing.  

No goodbye.  The last time he left, he had even said something along the lines of ‘see you soon,’ although the memory was frayed from age and Vlad could no longer recall the exact words.  For a long time, Vlad had worried something disastrous had happened to Clockwork. But then he had finally managed to build his own portal, reach the Ghost Zone under his own power, and, according to every search he did, every line of inquiry that bore fruit, Clockwork was just fine.  

Vlad had been furious.  He had been betrayed.  He had spent the better half of a decade trying to plot revenge against Clockwork, before realizing that was akin to plotting revenge against a god and turning his sights to a more manageable target.  

Now…

Now, Vlad just wanted answers.  Both as to the reason behind his abandonment and as to why Clockwork was apparently repeating history with Daniel.  

“Sweetie pie,” said the hologram, with a chime, “audio processing complete.  There are over ninety-nine instances where the word ‘clockwork’ is mentioned.  Would you like to play the selected files?”

“Yes,” said Vlad.  “Include the video portions where available, and the thirty seconds immediately prior to and following the mention.”

He turned his attention to the nearest screen.  He had a lot of videos to watch.  

There was an envelope pinned to it.  It was sealed with wax, impressed with the image of a pocket watch and the initials CW.  Vlad attempted, and failed, to suppress the growl that grew in the back of his throat. Was this a joke to Clockwork?

He tore the envelope from the screen, ripped it open with equal viciousness, and began to read.

.

Three cups sat on the tea service tray next to the teapot.

“Are you expecting someone else,” asked Danny, “or am I going to break one of these?”

Clockwork chuckled as he began to pour the tea.  “The former,” he said.  “Although you may always surprise me with the latter.”

He handed Danny his cup.  Danny inhaled deeply.  It smelled sweet.  “What is it?” he asked.  

“A chamomile blend,” said Clockwork.  “For calm.”

“I think Sam drinks chamomile before she goes to bed,” observed Danny, offhandedly.  “Who’s coming?”

“You’ll see soon enough.”

Danny made a face.  “Do you have to be mysterious all—”

The front door of Clockwork’s lair slammed open, and Danny jolted forward in alarm – the only people who regularly did that were the Observants, who didn’t much care for Danny – but Clockwork put a steadying hand on his shoulder and rewound his tea into his cup.

“Clockwork!” came the expected yell.  The yeller, however…

“Is that Vlad?” asked Danny, not quite scandalized, but more than a little surprised.  

“Why, yes,” said Clockwork.  

“Did you – Clockwork, did you invite him here?”

“Other than the Observants,” said Clockwork, “no one can enter unless I will it.”  He took a sip of his tea.  

“But,” started Danny.  

Clockwork raised a hand.  “Don’t worry, he’ll find us soon enough.”  He repurposed the hand to pat Danny’s knee.  “And even should he prove to be in a combative mood, I will not allow you to come to harm.  You are safe here, Daniel.”

“Thanks,” mumbled Danny, looking away, towards the door in the sitting room through which Vlad would presumably enter.  

Sure enough, a few seconds later Vlad half-flew half-skidded into Clockwork’s sitting room.  He leveled an accusatory finger at Clockwork.  “You!” he proclaimed, with a great deal of venom.  

“Hello, Vladimir, I’ve poured you some tea.  Why don’t you sit down?  I understand it has been some time.”

“You under-?  No!  I will not sit down!  I will not drink your tea.  Not after you abandoned me for over a decade, just like that bumbling oaf—”

“Hey!” interjected Danny, not only because Vlad had once again insulted his father, but because he could tell that Clockwork, regardless of his stoic façade, was actually quite upset.  

“Don’t interrupt me, Daniel,” snapped Vlad.  “You don’t know what this, this ghost is. What he does.  You don’t know that he gets close to you, makes you think you’re friends, and then drops you without a moment’s notice.  Did you think it was funny to string along a man in dire straits? Did you?”

“I did not abandon you, Vladimir, I—”

Vlad scoffed and went on a tirade that Danny honestly found hard to parse.  But it sounded like Vlad and Clockwork had known each other in the past and then fallen out of contact in a way that aggravated Vlad’s abandonment issues.  Which didn’t seem like Clockwork at all, but Vlad sounded extremely certain and insistent, and Clockwork’s upset was actually finding its way into his voice, now.  Danny didn’t—

With all the force and abruptness of epiphany, Danny realized what was going on here.  

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Danny, putting down his cup. “Vlad, breathe or whatever.  Clockwork, you did tell Vlad that you experience time nonlinearly, right?”

“Of course,” said Clockwork, clearly offended.

“But Vlad, ah, had you gone through natural portals often when you met Clockwork?  Or, like, did you ever see him without him initiating contact?”

“I didn’t have my portal built yet, Daniel, so, no.”

Danny turned to Clockwork.  “Why did you-?  No that doesn’t matter.  Haaauuuhh, Clockwork, do you have-?”

Clockwork waved a hand and a whiteboard appeared.  

“Thanks,” said Danny, picking a marker up from the little shelf on the bottom.  He uncapped it, then recapped it.  “Actually, before that.  Vlad—” he pointed at Vlad, who looked about one second from exploding “—you have some idea of how old Clockwork is, right?  Or at least how old ghosts can get?”

“Yes, Daniel,” said Vlad, managing to overlay his supercilious ‘I know better than you’ attitude over his still obvious anger.

“Okay, great.  So, just to establish, Clockwork has been around at least since, uh, beginning of time?”

“Give or take,” agreed Clockwork.  “Although I have not experienced it all directly.”

“Right,” said Danny.  “Just, already, his perception of time is different from our because of age differences.”

Vlad looked slightly less angry, and slightly closer to curious.  

“But, then, there’s the larger issue,” continued Danny.  This time his uncapping of the marker was decisive.  He drew a flat, straight, horizontal line across the whiteboard.  “This is our timeline.  We deal with time linearly.  We’ve also got, I don’t know, parallel timelines, like this.”  He drew several more lines.  “You following so far?”

“Yes, Daniel, I’ve read my share of science fiction.”

He was probably rolling his eyes.  Curse his solid-colored red eyes.  It made interpreting his looks and figuring out where he was looking during a fight much more difficult.  

“Anyway, Clockwork isn’t on any of these lines. Because he experiences time nonlinearly.”  He drew a squiggly up and down line on the board that resembled the world’s saddest sine wave.  Or cosine wave.  There wasn’t a y-axis on the not-quite-graph, so it wasn’t like anyone could tell the difference.  They were effectively the same.  

And Vlad still made fun of him for failing math. Danny knew plenty about math.  He just didn’t have time to do the work.  Mostly because of Vlad.  

“Now, that, that is Clockwork’s timeline.  It isn’t always in contact with ours.  It’s, like, solutions to a system of equations. Nonlinear equations,” he specified, in case it had been too long since Vlad had encountered basic high-school-level algebra.

“It is somewhat more complicated than that, Daniel,” said Clockwork, exasperated.  “It’s more of—"  

“Yeah, but this gets the idea across more than the whole parade metaphor, doesn’t it?”

“I would say not.  This doesn’t even begin to touch on my abilities.”

“That’s because we’re just talking about your perception of time,” said Danny.  He considered for a moment.  “And also your ability to interact with our timeline.”

“Which includes my ability to perceive multiple timelines.”

“But that’s complicated, and I still don’t get it,” complained Danny.  

“It is less complicated than what you are currently trying to explain.”

“To you maybe, but the whole point of this is that you aren’t seeing things the same way we are.  You disappeared on Vlad, what, a decade ago?”  He looked to Vlad for confirmation.  

“A decade is hardly any time at all,” said Clockwork with exasperation.  He sipped at his tea.  

“It was fifteen years.”

Clockwork made a somewhat dismissive motion with a gloved hand.  “It’s a tiny fraction of your life as a whole.”

“It’s… closer to a third of his current lifetime,” said Danny with a wince.  “Or a fourth?  I don’t know how old you are, dude.”

“I went to college with your parents.”

“I know, and you were already graying then. Your age is weirdly hard to place.”

Vlad gave Danny a look, but his body language was no longer screaming ‘I’m going to beat the snot after you.’  Danny counted that as a win under the current circumstances.  He disliked Vlad, but in a fight with Clockwork… Well, Clockwork could demolish just about anyone.  

Not that Clockwork would.  Just that he could.  

“Daniel—”

“Please, Vladimir.  Just sit down.  Try the tea. I made it for you.  I knew you would be upset, although I could not see exactly why.”  Clockwork was almost pouting, now.  “Fifteen years is such a short time.”

“Clockwork, I’m fifteen.”

“I know,” said Clockwork, patting Danny on the knee. “Your timeline is so small.  And cute.”

Vlad was now distinctly on his back foot, offput and disarmed.  “His timeline is cute?”

“It is.  Don’t worry, yours is almost as cute.”

Vlad opened and closed his mouth like a dying fish. Danny pushed the whiteboard away.

“Don’t worry about it too much,” he said.  “Like I said, different perception of time.”

“I really didn’t mean to make you feel abandoned, Vladimir.  I simply wanted to give you some time to, ah, how should I put this?  Have space?  Find yourself?”

Vlad sat heavily on the couch.  

“You get used to it,” said Danny.  “But, Clockwork, do you think you can talk him into having fewer evil plans?  Because, really.  There are way too many.  Like, one a week.  They’re destroying my grades.  Have you ever seen anyone else who had weekly evil plans?”

“Evil plans, Vladimir?  Really?”

i saw that post and thought of this yesterday but my brain was unreasonably shy but here it is now usdygbhjn: “It’s three in the morning.” danny @ dash

Milky Way

Sometimes Danny hates living in the city. Actually, most of the time he hates it. Not because of the noise, or all the people, or even the ghosts, but the stars. Or the lack of them, at least.

Danny was ten years old when he realized the sky he saw every night was a lie. He had seen plenty of pictures of the night sky taken from different parts of the world. At that age, he just assumed that’s how the sky worked. Some places had less stars than others, he was unfortunately born in a place with very few stars overhead.

Until his sister got him a big astronomy textbook for his tenth birthday and he learned the city was to blame. All the city lights polluted the sky and kept him from seeing the sky for what it truly was. For weeks, he tried to convince his parents to move, to pack up all their things in the RV and drive out far away into the middle of nowhere, where there was no people and no light pollution, and he could see the stars in all their glory every night.

He never got that wish, but nowadays Danny doesn’t mind it so much. Now, if he wants to see the night sky as it should be seen, all he has to do is fly up, up, up beyond the clouds, just past the edge of the mesosphere.

There, he floats along the Kármán line, the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space, and he can see everything. It’s beautiful. He can’t help but think of every childhood drawing he made of the stars and how wrong he was.

The sky isn’t an endless expanse of black peppered with bright white spots. It’s a gorgeous mix of blues and purples, and even some pink in the Milky Way itself. Every inch of the sky is covered in stars. There are so many he has trouble picking out the constellations he knows better than his hometown, but he manages.

The familiar cup of Ursa Minor, Draco’s lithe body winding past, Hercules’ crooked form by the dragon’s head.

Danny traces the familiar lines with his softly glowing eyes and feels as empty as the space between the stars. Even though that distance looks so small from here, he knows how vast it really is.

Tipping back his head, he stares back down toward Earth. Cities make their own constellations across the dark surface. The sixty-two miles between him and the ground right now is not enough. He wants to fly higher, way out into space, and get lost in its cold comfort. But he can’t, because he has a city to protect, friends who depend on him, and a family who loves him.

At least he thinks they love him.

Danny reaches for his phone and goes to check the time, but the screen doesn’t turn on. He frowns, tapping the screen, and even shakes the device a few times. And then he remembers how cold it’s supposed to be up here, something he can’t really feel anymore, and it probably killed the battery.

He’s just lucky it isn’t iced over. At this height, it should be, but he probably has the radiation from his ectoplasm to thank for that.

Grudgingly, Danny tells himself he should probably head home. He flips over, head to the ground, and starts flying.

He takes his time, it’s still barely more than hour before he’s back in Amity. Just before diving through Fenton Work’s roof, he looks back up at the sky. It’s empty and sad.

The first thing Danny does when he’s back in his room is plug in his phone. He considers transforming; it’s dangerous to stay in ghost form while his parents are home. But after staring at his blank phone for a few long seconds he decides against it. He doesn’t really want to be human right now.

Curled up on his bed, head against his pillow, knees pulled up to his chest, he waits for his phone to charge enough to turn on. Those five minutes feel infinitely longer than his flight back from space.

“Screw you, Clockwork,” Danny mutters. It’s not really Clockwork’s fault, but it feels good to have someone to blame, and the ghost of time is a ripe target.

The moment his screen lights up, Danny reaches out and snags it off his bedside table. He notes the time, quarter to three, then goes through his notifications. Some spam emails, a couple game notifications, but no texts or calls. Which makes sense, it’s the middle of the night, who the hell would be up right now besides him?

As soon as Danny thinks that, his phone buzzes and a message appears at the top of his screen.

From Dash: [image]

Another quickly follows.

From Dash: was that u?

Eyes heavy, Danny stares at the texts for a long moment before clicking them. The messaging app is bright and glaring compared to his dark home screen and he squints when it lights up his room. He clicks the image Dash send, feeling instant relief when his screen gets significantly darker.

It’s a shot of the sky from Dash’s bedroom window, the corner of the next building over cutting through the image. Just above that is a bright white speck. If Danny didn’t know better, he might have mistaken it for a star or a planet.

Closing out the image, Danny types back: yeah, it’s me.

He hits send, turns onto his back, and sets his phone down on his chest. He’s not expecting a reply, although he has no reason not to, so it startles him when his phone buzzes not even a second later.

From Dash: thought so. What were…

From Dash: Patrol?

Danny pulls himself up, opening his phone once again, and reads the full messages.

Dash: thought so. What were you doing so high up?

Dash: Patrol?

Hunched over his phone, Danny doesn’t so much stare at the screen as he does zone out in its general direction. He knows what he wants to type in response, but he can’t seem to get his fingers to move.

The phone sits cradled in his hand, his thumbs thick silhouettes against the white screen. The longer he looks, the more he thinks they aren’t his thumbs but just thumbs. Anyone’s thumbs. They didn’t belong to him. He was a hundred miles away, out in space.

Before he can decide if this is a good or bad idea, he hits the call button.

It gets through half a ring before Dash picks up.

“Hey, Danny.”

Dash’s is voice is rough and dry, but it isn’t thick with sleep, reassuring Danny he hasn’t dragged Dash out of partial slumber.

“Danny?”

The call time says it’s been going for over a minute.

Danny swallows. “Hey.”

“You okay?”

“Dash…” Danny trails off. He rolls his neck. It pops in a way that probably isn’t healthy, but is also so familiar he doesn’t think twice about it anymore. He licks his lips. “Why are we friends?”

That isn’t what he meant to say. He doesn’t know what he really wanted to say, but he knows that wasn’t it.

The call is at five minutes.

“Because Paulina and Sam are dating.” Dash chuckles.

Danny thinks he should be chuckling too, but the sound doesn’t come. It’s a joke they’ve made a hundred times, as familiar as the crick in Danny’s neck, but it’s not the answer he wants right now.

“I’m friends with Tucker because… because we’ve always been friends. I can’t imagine not being friends with him,” Danny says. He takes one the hands—his hands, he has to remind himself—away from the phone and turns it over. Is it really him doing that?

“Sam kind of made herself friends with us. But we always thought she was cool anyway, so, we wanted her.” Danny rubs his hand on his thigh, stopping to grip his knee. He can feel the pressure, but he can’t really feel it. “We hate each other.”

Ten minutes.

“We used to, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t think I ever really hated you. Just, stupid high school stuff.”

“Stupid high school stuff,” Danny repeats. He glances at the time at the top of his screen. “It’s three in the morning.”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you up at three in the morning?”

“Why are you?”

Danny sucks in a sharp breath. “Just. Couldn’t sleep. Yeah.”

“Yeah? Same.”

This time, Danny chuckles. He can’t figure out why it’s funny, but it is. Dash? Having trouble sleeping? People like him aren’t supposed to have Danny’s problems. They’re supposed to date the head cheerleader, and have tons of friends, and get some big football scholarship that carries them through college, and be famous. Or something.

But the head cheerleader is dating Sam. Dash only has a handful of people he talks to regularly. He told Danny last month that he doesn’t want to play football in college. He wants to be a social worker, like his mom, and not be famous.

Danny laughs again.

“What’s so funny?”

“S-Sam,” Danny says between giggles. “Sam stole your girlfriend.”

“She really didn’t.” Dash sounds amused, a humorous lilt in his voice.

Danny can’t figure out what he finds so funny. It’s Dash’s life that isn’t going how it’s supposed to. Sucks to be him, thrust into a set role the moment he became quarterback in freshman year, stuck with a path he doesn’t want, that he doesn’t quite seem to fit. What kind of high school king is he?

The next time Danny laughs, it sounds closer to a sob. He sniffs and rubs his nose on his sleeve, the thick, rubbery material of his jumpsuit irritating his nose. The suit smells vaguely of burnt flesh and sulfur. No matter what Danny does, he can’t seem to wash it out.

Twenty minutes.

“Danny, I think you should go to sleep now.”

“’M fine,” Danny insists.

“You’re really not.”

“That’s kind of rude.” Danny drags his hand through his hair. It never feels like normal hair in his ghost form. Too wispy and light, like a silk veil.

“I can call you in the morning if you want. Or I can get Paulina to text Sam, or Tucker. I think I still have Jazz’s number somewhere.”

“Don’t hang up,” Danny says softly. He fells forward, curling onto his side around the phone, sticking his feet under his pillow.

They’ve been on the phone for well over half an hour now. Danny’s pretty sure they haven’t talked enough to fill out all that time. He wonders how much of it Dash has spent just sitting there, waiting for Danny to answer. It makes him feel like a bit of a prick.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Danny can tell Dash doesn’t know what the apology’s for, but he appreciates the acceptance nonetheless.

“You won’t hang up?” Danny asks.

“I won’t hang up.”

Danny nods, even though Dash can’t see it. He wishes he could. He wants someone here right now, but not Sam, or Tucker, or his sister, or his parents who maybe hate him, but he can never be too sure because they don’t know they hate him and he’s too afraid to tell them. Without all those other options, he supposes Dash will do.

He falls asleep, eventually, and wakes up human and cold, his phone still on beside him.

Holiday Truce 2019

Title: Don’t Worry About Your Back. I’ve Got It.

Genre: Fluff

Word Count: 1992

A/N: My Secret Santa gift for @whosvladagain!!! Happy Holidays!! Hope you enjoy!

Danny was enjoying his lunch at the Nasty Burger. It was a familiar scene: Sam and Tucker sat across him, with a tofu burger and a meat-filled monstrosity in front of each one, respectively.

“Tucker, that is absolutely disgusting.”

Sam was referring to the newest addition to the Nasty Burger’s menu that Tucker had been so eager to try out.

Danny had nothing against meat in general, but he had to draw the line somewhere. And that line was the “Nasty Burger’s Meaty Meatster Special”. All seven stacks of its meaty glory were a bit much, in his opinion.

“Look,” Tucker said between bites, “We already agreed a while back that just because you like vegetables and I like meat doesn’t mean we can be mean to each other about it.”

The techno-geek looked at her with eyebrows raised. “Remember? It’s all about respecting each other,” he said, making circular movements in the air with his hands to emphasize his “respectfulness”.

“I’m gonna have to side with Sam on this one, Tuck,” Danny said, eyeing the sauce traveling down his friend’s chin. “That thing is a meat monster. I’m getting flashbacks to when the Lunch Lady first attacked.”

Tucker let his meal fall to the plate. “Are you kidding me? Just because she’s your girlfriend now—“

“It’s got nothing to do with us dating! Have you seen what you’re eating? It’s an affront to nature!” Sam interrupted.

“Have you seen what you’re eating?,” the boy next to her replied, “An affront to the nature of my tastes is what it is!”

Danny tuned out his friends’ habitual bickering about the other’s diets with a fond smile and a shake of his head. Years have passed, and so much was different, but some things never change.

He looked out the window as Valerie zoomed past in the distance, a bright red figure against the gray of the sky, giving him a small wave. He waved back, but she was already gone.

As his gaze wandered idly over the street outside, there was no way to ignore all the red and green of the holiday decor. Amity Park was in a festive mood, and so was Danny. He was excited for Christmas. Which, honestly surprised him. After all these years. He was ready to celebrate with the people he loved. Maybe he should pay the Ghost Writer a visit to say thanks. Even if the guy had tried to kill him.

But, something was still bothering him.

A news broadcast of a fire he had stopped earlier today was playing in one of the shop windows. As he watched himself rescue the victims, he realized what it was.

Phantom.

“Uhh, Earth to Danny,” Sam said, waving her hand in front of the ghost boy’s face. “You were a million miles away just now. How were the sunsets on Jupiter?”

Danny shifted his attention back to their table. When had the two of them stopped arguing?

“I was just thinking, guys.”

“Dreaming ‘bout NASA again?” Tucker teased.

He rolled his eyes at his best friend and took a deep breath. His mind was made up.

“No, no. I’m telling my parents after the Christmas party.”

***

“Man, are you sure about this?”

Danny took his time answering, letting his eyes rest on the little Christmas wreath that hung above the portal. He had helped his parents decorate this year, and he decided that it would be fitting to put some festive cheer around the portal. Since ghosts and the holidays go well together, surprisingly.

He breathed deeply, putting his attention back on his friends.

“Yes, I’m sure. It’s been four and a half years, Tuck. I’m moving out for college after the summer, and I just want to clear things. No more secrets.”

Sam looked up at him, worrying her lower lip. Then she moved past him to put a hand on the closed portal doors (thank Clockwork for the Truce), her back turned to them.

“We’re just looking out for you, you know that, right?” she asked in a small voice.

He answered “Yes”, not a hint of doubt in his voice. There was no way he could say no.

“And you’re right: it has been four and a half years. Four and a half crazy years that saw the three of us running around trying not to let the ghosts overwhelm Amity and Danny,” she said, still facing the portal.

Tucker snorted. “Don’t forget that we were also trying to make sense of high school at the same time. Not to mention we were the social outcasts. I don’t think a lot of people can say their teenage years were as...interesting as ours were.”

He moved to her right side in front of the ghostly gate. “And it all started here,” he said, pulling her hand into his. Their eyes met, and he kissed her forehead. A blush crept onto his face and hers. God, he would never get used to kissing her.

“Look at you two lovebirds getting all cozy in front of the fire.”

Danny jumped a little. He hadn’t noticed when the boy had moved to stand by his right side. The third party wriggled his eyebrows suggestively at the two of them. The ghost boy felt rather than saw Sam’s eye roll.

Then Tucker dropped it, and looked up at the ceiling.

“More than anything, we’re just trying to make sure you’re mentally ready for this. Like, is your psyche all set? They did hunt you and threaten to tear you apart ‘molecule by molecule’ for a long while,” his best friend said, eyebrows raised questioningly.

With the three of them in front of the portal, Danny let go of Sam’s hand to put his arms around his two closest friends and pulled them to him.

“It’s been a year since they officially became Phantom’s allies, guys. They’re my parents. Christmas is supposed to be spent with family, right? I’d like to have one holiday I can spend honestly with them, for once. I’m ready to tell them, and Jazz and I think they’re ready to know,” he paused, having said what he needed to.

This seemed to placate them for the time being, and Danny was glad they understood.

“Speaking of Jazz, Tuck don’t give me a mental review, my sister’s already done enough. And, she’ll be there to back me up in case…” he trailed off. He swallowed, and the two of them leaned more into him, offering silent support. He shook his head. Christmas was supposed to be spent with family, and he was glad to have them with him.

This was another big event in Danny’s life, and the members of their little huddle stood quiet before the portal for some time, reminiscing.

After a few minutes of silence, Danny couldn’t resist.

Breaking into a wide grin, he said,“Wow. Guess the holidays this year have us feeling extra Santa-mental, huh?”

The two at his sides groaned, but didn’t break away.

“Way to ruin the moment, dude,” the techno-geek complained.

Danny smiled, and held his friends more tightly.

When they broke apart, Tucker went up ahead of them, eager to help the other Fentons set up for the dinner party (and maybe find a meaty snack in the process). Danny and Sam took their time going up, their hands locked once more.

Once they reached the base of the steps, Sam looked over her shoulder and at the portal, a pout fixed onto her mouth.

He frowned. He took her pale chin in his hand and slowly swiveled her head to face him. It seemed that it was his turn to reassure her.

“I wouldn’t take back any of those years for the world,” he said, emphasizing each word.

Her intense amethyst eyes bore into his. A small smile found its way onto her face, and she squeezed his hand. “I know. I wouldn’t either.”

***

Their little Christmas party hadn’t gone on long enough, in Danny’s opinion. All too soon, everyone was saying their goodbyes and taking home some extra food.

Team Phantom stayed to one side while the parents present wrapped up (ha! Christmas pun) their goodbyes.

They were giving the other members a summary of his and Jazz’s plan. The redhead had said that it would help ease their worries, and he had agreed. And, they deserved to know what was going on.

There were nodding heads and thoughtful gazes all around as the rest of the team evaluated the Fenton siblings’ course of action.

“....and then I change and, well, we’ll see.”

Jazz placed an arm around his shoulders to ground him, and (not for the first time and not for the last time he was sure) he was glad she had come home for the holidays. Danny wished talking to his parents didn’t have to be such a big deal.

Valerie had been quiet throughout the discussion, avoiding eye contact. He wondered if she was reliving the time he had told her. (One afternoon he wouldn’t be forgetting any time soon.)

When she looked up, however, it was with a playful grin. She punched his shoulder. “Good luck, Phantom.” “I—We trust you,” she added more seriously, looking to the others who voiced their agreement.

“And we’ll be there if you need us. Seriously. Anything goes wrong you need to call us, man,” Tucker said. “And I don’t wanna have to deal with any of your heroic B.S. about dealing with things by yourself on Christmas Day, you hear?”

Danny raised his hands defensively, but was cut off by Sam.

“Jazz, we’re counting on you not to let him do anything stupid,” his girlfriend added to the older Fenton sibling as Danny rolled his eyes.

His sister’s eyebrows were raised in clear amusement at his friends’ statements. But she did say, “Don’t worry; this big sister is on extra alert for dumbassery this Christmas Eve.”

Danny shook his head in mock annoyance at their antics. Inside, he thanked Clockwork that his friends had kept things light. This was a big night, the outcome of which directly affected a huge aspect of his life, and he didn’t want to screw it up.

After they had all exchanged their last goodbyes and had said their final “Happy Holidays!” (and after one last gift under the mistletoe from Sam), he and the rest of the Fenton family fell to fixing up. It was… soothing, just washing the dishes and putting things away alongside his father and his mother and his sister. It helped him to clear his head a bit, and by the time he and Jazz started their little scheme, he felt more determined than ever.

***

Danny’s parents were on the couch, snuggled up against each other. It was nearing midnight, the 25th just a couple of hours away. His dad said he was going to stay on the couch to watch for Santa Claus, while his mom said she was going to stay with him to prove that the big, red man wasn’t real. Both of them were drooping off, and their son smiled. It was a nice scene compared to the years of endless, pointless, and heated debates going back and forth about the existence of Ol’ Saint Nick. They looked so happy, he almost wished he didn’t need to disturb them.

He cleared his throat, and his parents startled. Quick as lightning, they each pulled out a capturing tool (Jack held an absurdly large butterfly net. Maddie was holding a coil of rope.) and very nearly succeeded in subduing the Christmas tree. They soon realized that it was not, in fact, Santa Claus who had awoken them, and sheepishly returned to their places on the sofa.

He gave the tree a once-over (not to worry; it looked pine) before he moved to sit in front of the couple on the couch.

“Mom, Dad, what do you honestly think of Phantom?”

Space

For the Phic Phight 2019, organized by @currently-lurking and @ibelieveinahappilyeverafter

ao3 | ffn

Prompt: "Black hole wormholes lead to ghost zone portals. Ghost zone Galaxies, maybe replicating the galaxies IRL; the ghost zone was space basically." - @whosvladagain

Word count: 715

Danny had always dreamed of space.

He had dreamed of flying to Mars on a rocket ship, of visiting Alpha Centauri and exploring what worlds the binary star system has to offer, of seeing the Pillars of Creation with his own two eyes, of traversing the depths of a black hole to find just what lay on the other side of its event horizon.

Of course, most of these dreams were pipe dreams. The Pillars of Creation were 7000 lightyears away; the nearest black hole, 3300 lightyears away in the Monoceros constellation. Even Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to the Solar system, took 4.3 years to reach traveling at the speed of light. There was no way humanity would invent faster than light travel before Danny was old and gray. So he had set his sights on Mars, on joining NASA's ranks and setting himself up for a trip that could only be made every 26 months, a trip that would take 234 days using Hohmann transfer, a trip that would place him among the first to set foot on another planet.

Now, of course, even that was a pipe dream.

With his grades - hell, with his biology, if you could call it that - how could he hope to join the ranks of NASA? Even if he somehow pulled his grades up enough for them to consider him, he'd never make it past the initial health screening. Even if they didn't send him to the nearest lab for "lots and lots of painful experiments", who would trust a freak of nature like him to join a team of NASA's elite? Except for experimentation, why would anyone send a ghost to space?

But the more time he spent in the Ghost Zone, the more he realized he didn't need NASA to go to space. Space was right here.

In space, stars were born, and lived, and died. And as their lives left an imprint on the universe, so too did their deaths leave a mark upon the Ghost Zone - the remnants of white dwarves peppering the infinite realms, outshone by supernovae forever exploding bright green, spilling ectoplasm into the Ghost Zone. Portals shown like stars, twinkling in and out of existence, forming ever changing constellations against the endless swirling green. When they collided, ectoplasmic dust flew from them, swirling and spiraling and adding to the flow of the Ghost Zone, forming nebulae in which ghosts and lairs and islands were born.

And all of it sang. The supernovae gushing, the portals spinning and colliding, the nebulae drifting, the Ghost Zone itself flowing and swirling in a dance only ghosts seemed to understand - a dance they were a part of, dancing to the musica universalis, the dynamic equilibrium set in the give and take of the infinite realms. It was a dance Danny could feel inside himself, flowing through his veins and thrumming in his core. He couldn't explain it - didn't know how to tell Sam that the howling and static she heard was music to his very being, couldn't explain to Tucker how the meandering route he took from the Fenton Portal to the Far Frozen simply felt right in a way that cutting through the flow in a straight line didn't. They were human - they couldn't feel the music of the spheres in their own universe, let alone in a dimension of which they ultimately were not a part. Danny couldn't explain it, but he could feel it with every last molecule of his self. And most days, that was enough.

He sat atop the highest peak of an unclaimed island, feeling his molecules dance with the universe, gazing at the whirling, crashing, magnificent galaxies spinning above him. He thought about a book from Clockwork's tower that had caught his eye - the cover was black, but glinted with a hint of stars, of constellations he had never seen before. It claimed that at the center of every black hole lay a portal to the Ghost Zone.

As he stared, a portal formed, and then another. They crashed into each other, and the splash of ectoplasmic dust from their collision looked almost like the Pillars of Creation. The sound was music to his ears.

He had always dreamed of space.

Now he didn't have to.

Forte’s Fan Character Flashback Friday - #7

Name:: Valarie Masters Series: Danny Phantom Background: Holey moley guacamole! I missed Fan Character Flashback Friday! I mean... today is a Friday, but I was supposed to post this last week! Dangit! I'm sorry! Things are kinda crazy on my end still and it only dawned on me today that I had forgotten to do something - and it was this.

A thousand apologies for my tardiness, but going on about that still won't get this posted.

I've actually been waiting to post this character because I KNOW I had old art of her SOMEWHERE around and I cannot, for the life of me, find it, and unfortunately, I'm down in Texas right now to help out my aunt and uncle so I can't even continue looking for the physical copies of said old art if it even still exists. I KNOW it exists, because I used to post art for this character on a Danny Phantom fan forum I would RP on and heck, I even found that old forum, managed to log in to see if any of those old links still worked, and NOPE.

Guess I deleted them off the Photobucket I once had them on at some point and where the physical copies are, I'm not sure, because I don't remember seeing them when going through my old drawing binders.

It's really quite frustrating.

Anyway, this is Valarie, who I named forgetting about the actual Valerie Grey character from the series, cause the name fit the general bad fan character naming system of "it starts with the same letter of the character I like and is kinda similar, so I'll go with it".  I kept it anyway, cause little me reasoned, "well, this Valarie spells it with two As while the other is with an A and an E, so it's fine."

Just kinda funny that they're both linked to Vlad though, so yay, I guess? Hahah, I dunno.

Anywho, Valarie was set up/designed to be Vlad's daughter, but not even his biological daughter, though not a clone like some of my other fan characters, though with things that happen later in the actual series, it would actually be... possible/viable. Instead, she was a extraordinary creation of the Ghost Zone and was more or less "born" of the supernatural energies that construct that dimension.

I guess you can kind of compare her existence to that of Maria from Silent Hill 2. The Born from a Wish scenario kind of implies that Maria was manifested by the town using James' subconscious memories and feelings regarding his wife. Valarie, in the same vein, was manifested by the Ghost Zone, for whatever reason, to help placate Vlad's need and want for a family of his own.

Mind you, this entire backstory was cobbled together before Kindred Spirits introduced Dani Phantom and her entire storyline... which... is.... kinda the same, really, to Valarie's, and I remember at the time, was kind of mad about it back in the day.

Speaking of Dani Phantom, I remember how a lot of people were mad about Butch Hartman's apparent laziness in her character design and creation, cause it was pretty akin to many "bad fan characters" that you see out there, which, hey, I won't deny; that's what this whole Flashback thing I do is about, but you know, this just serves as a good example of the fact that pretty much... everyone does this. Everyone makes bad fan characters, even for their own things, so I think it's just more healthy for people to realize this and embrace it, hahaha.

Going back to Valarie - she's more or less a person who exists to help Vlad chill the fuck out and maybe not ruin things for everyone or everything. A more recent reason I came up with for this was that Clockwork and/or The Observants that are seen in the Ultimate Enemy special with Dark Danny foresaw Vlad's ambitions proving to be too troublesome in the future, so to prevent this from causing way more havoc than it's worth, even with Danny around to stop him or whatever, they're like "hey just throw him a kid; that'll keep him busy a little, right?"

Even with her supernatural origins, Valarie is half-human and half-ghost like Vlad and looks much like him thanks to just her being a physical manifestation of one of his subconscious desires. Physically, she’s about seven or eight years old and generally acts playful, though polite, but can occasionally come off as spoiled.

She shares many of her father’s sentiments towards various issues and people, though it’s safe to assume she doesn’t fully understand his reasoning for those feelings due to how young she is. For example, she harbors a dislike for Jack, though finds his clumsiness more amusing than idiotic and only really says she hates him because Vlad does.

In regards to Danny, she likes him and finds him fun to play with, but in her terms, that means toying around with him. Despite her small size, she can hold her own in battle and has a good handle on her ghost powers and won’t hesitate to use them to pull pranks or harass other people, especially if she has or is told to. Her antics can be described as impish while in ghost form, though she likes to feign innocence if caught.

A big point of curiosity with her is her memory; she has no memory of a time before not “being” and has no real answer when asked about her childhood. She doesn’t seem bothered by this lack of knowledge and usually shrugs it off, intent that she exists because she does; she feels no need to question it further. For her things are simple: if her father is happy, she’s happy. Be this just some childish thought process or some more ingrained sense of purpose because of her strange origins is up for debate.

More was actually done with this character than others and like I said, there used to be old sketches of her about. If I ever find them (and I hope I do, really), I’ll be sure to post them.

But aside from that, like I said, I did role play with this character on a Danny Phantom fan thread and boy was that a cringy time. I will admit now, that back then, when I was like 12 or whatever, I was an obnoxious brat who didn’t know how to really socialize or what she was doing on the Internet. Hahaha, when going back there to find the old image links, I ventured onto some of my older posts and…. Whooooo boy, no thank you.

I know at that point I did also write short fanfics from time to time, but I think those might be locked on boot drives from our old computers and don’t have a way of looking for them now either. For those, if I ever do find them, I might also post them, but it all depends on just HOW much cringe I want to trudge up and share, hahaha.

I know I’ve been ranting a lot now and it’s already now past Friday, even for the time zone I’m in, but I’m gonna go on a little side story as… an apology, though it just means a bit more ranting.

When I said I RPed on this site, I can’t actually say a lot of actual character development happened. I don’t remember what the system was for RPing canon show characters and the times they did pop up, it was on a situational basis, because more people were interested in playing their own character and pretty much everyone on that forum had half-ghost, half-human characters that had their powers for one reason or another.

There was one thread that was particularly popular though that I spent a lot of time in with most of the other players, called Halfa High, so it was just kids in high school. Characters, like mine, that were younger than high school age, had various reasons for being there, like they’re super geniuses or they have a sibling there they’ve come to see or something like that; it’s a fandom RP so anything can happen. Most of the stuff in here, because it was 12-14 or whatever year olds, was just characters pairing up with each other, cause I guess that’s just what kids care about, hahaha. I don’t know, I’m just an old lady now.

Anyway, this thread went on for a good number of pages and eventually they started a second one. And then they had one where everyone went to summer camp, so other weird adventures could be had without the confines of going to school.

This was the one I remember doing the most in though frankly, I don’t remember what the overarching storyline was at the time, though I don’t think I knew what was really going on back in the day either.

One of the big points I do remember was the fact that many of the people on this forum looked up to one particular member, who I’ll call Susan, because that was her character’s name. I’m pretty sure she was in her early 20s at this time, so a lot of the younger people gravitated towards her because she was mature and knew how to keep things moving in terms of RP story; she was more or less the main storyteller of the Halfa threads, coming up with a lot of the plot points and twists. She was also just popular cause she had been there for a while, I think, and she was a pretty good artist on the forum.

She wasn’t necessarily a bad person and usually always open to adapting an RP to involve suggested ideas, but I remember at the time, I was super jealous of her. One, because she did have really good art and I felt like a poo-poo artist and two, because she seemed to have a lot of sway in terms of what she wanted to happen in most scenarios, so much so, it was treated as forum canon that her character was married to Dark Danny and had two kids with him.

Nowadays, of course, I don’t give a damn. Whatever. But back then, it was annoying to me. And I guess some part of me wanted to pair my characters with Older Dan. I remember actually being openly mad about it on the forums and to her in private messages about it and did get in trouble for being a salty, little brat for it. One time, I even wrote a bitter fanfic that was less than subtle in regards to it, but I remember cooling my jets enough for them to not just full out ban me.

Like I said, I was obnoxious back then; it’s a phase all kids go through I guess, cause I see it in kids that age even now.

Anyway, this actually developed into a story point in the RP when I agreed to not be such an Angsty Annie about the whole thing and the Halfa Summer Camp thread took some weird turns. Besides the usual pairing of everyone’s characters with one another and other summer camp-y hijinks, it had time travel, an evil group that were named after the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and political unrest regarding a ghostly royal family.

The royal family, of course, consisted of Susan and Dan, and their two kids. They had a son and a little girl, who I don’t remember the names of in the slightest. Susan got crowned? Queen of the Ghost Zone after she and some members of some Ghost Council? Were able to seal away Pariah Dark… and in that timeline, Dan was a fugitive, so they got married in secret and still managed to have secret relations enough to have their two kids.

But see, that was in the future of the Ghost Zone, which was like 20-30 years away from the time of the events of the actual RP. Why they were going back in time, I don’t remember, but I think it was something to do with Clockwork sending them back or something, who knows.

Valarie, however, is also technically part of the Ghost Royal Family (cause that’s a thing here…. hahaha), because I guess Susan was… Vlad’s niece? Somehow? So that made her and Valarie cousins, but because Susan was the one who sealed the Big Bad away, that meant she got to be Queen, just… because? There will be a lot of uncertainty with this recollection, cause again, heck if I actually knew or know what happened then.

Anyway, I guess in the uhm… present timeline, Susan was going to summer camp and this was before her and Danny were even a thing, cause doesn’t happen until they’re adults? I think, but she runs into a version of Dan that’s… in between him being a teenage and the future version that’s married to Susan… and… there was some contention with that, but again, I don’t remember what…

But eventually, everyone’s future selves end up appearing at summer camp, again for their own various reasons, along with Susan’s future kids, who get caught up in things, mainly because of misunderstanding and people having grudges and just wanting to kill other people without talking it out.

This loops back to my annoyance with Susan getting her character paired with a major canon character and the aforementioned political unrest, because it led to Older Valarie being a quiet, hardened soldier with a hidden, strong, but deeply unrequited love for Dan, which of course, causes a bit of tension with her and Susan, who is the Queen in the future. Also, apparently, I guess? There was a Ghost War or something? In the future or at some point that they set up a Royal Guard and Army, cause Valarie was more or less the Captain of all that, along with the personal trainer of the eldest son of the Royal Family. Future Susan, of course, is fine with her being in such a position of power cause I guess she’s proved it by this point and she doesn’t know of Valarie’s feelings for her husband, so it’s all right as rain as long as she just… stews about it silently to herself, because that is totally the healthy thing to do.

Older Valarie also goes back in time though, because eventually, people start coming across the aforementioned Four Horsemen, which aren’t really horsemen, because they don’t even have horses, but again, are named after them and are supposed to be the “living embodiments” of their namesake. So we have super powerful characters named War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death running around for… reasons? That I can’t even remember. Certain members’ characters are actually the younger versions of the Four before they’re… corrupted? Or something like that and given those names and most the people who turn into whichever, of course, have to fight their evil, older selves cause that’s cool or whatever.

Younger Valarie, at the time, was just hanging about and I guess fawning over a teenage Danny or the in between Dan (this is just as confusing to remember as it is to read, trust me), and I think makes friends with the Future Prince and Princess, who again are running around. I think the Prince was there to try and find Dan, because he believes he? Killed his father? Even though Dan is his father? And Dan was there anyway to protect the younger version of his future wife…? And the Princess was there just cause she wanted her mom, which is Future Susan, who went back to… do…. Something…?

But anyway, Younger Valarie ends up getting approached by her future self, who had originally come to serve her duty as Captain of the Royal Guard and protect Future Queen Susan, but eventually starts to realize that she could perhaps mess with the past to change things to the way she really wants them (even though I know now that would probably create some annoying paradox but please don’t get me on time paradoxes cause we’ve been here long enough already), so she starts to put it in her younger self’s head that everything going on here isn’t fair and she should do more than just be obedient and trusting and take whatever Susan says without question, because by not being more open and honest about your feelings just leads to a life of misery, pain and loneliness.

However, Younger Valarie just doesn’t get why she would say these things and rejects that line of thinking, which kinda makes Older Valarie snap and be like “okay, fine, I guess I’ll just go kill some peeps and then you’ll see what I mean”... I mean, I think? She does try to stop influencing her younger self and try to take matters into her own hands though.

Because at one point, we did have it where Older Valarie confronts Older Susan about her deep, dark hidden feelings, and they get into a fight over it, especially after Older Valarie threatens to go kill the Prince, but being a trained soldier and the Captain of the Royal Guard, Older Valarie does kick Older Queen Susan’s butt, but I think… is interrupted by one of the Four, that being War.

I think Older Dan also comes in at some point and chides Older Valarie for her actions, but heck if I remember. To be honest, if I fully cared and wanted to really relive some cringe, I could probably go to the forum and just read over the whole thread, but that was like 200+ (if not more) of pages and I…. do not feel like doing that, hahaha.

Anyway, Older Valarie and War end up getting into a fight, because it turns out War himself has some issue with Older Valarie. And it turns out that he used to be like her second in command? Or something? Who disappeared while on a mission and ended up into some spoopy, dark, dangerous, evil place, where he got corrupted and turned into War and it turns out he was okay with it, because he was also angry and bitter, cause surprise! He himself had feelings for Older Valarie, but poor guy got friendzoned and his attempts went unnoticed because she instead had feelings for Older Dan, because love triangles are also a cool plot twist to do, cause why not, I guess.

Uhm… I think during this fight was when Older Valarie started to notice the error? Of her ways? Or something like that after seeing one of her closest subordinates fall into darkness, so her story shifts to trying to get War to remember who he used to be. This character did have an original name, but I totally forget what it was… Anyway, War claims that there’s nothing she can do because he embraced and was more than willing to give up his soul or whatever for the power to actually make Older Valarie notice him or something.

I… actually don’t remember much past this point, though. I want to say she did end up getting through to him, but that might just be me rewriting history. That character, though, was more or less being set up to give someone for Young Valarie to pair with and I do thing there was a present day or at least an uncorrupted version of that character pop up at one point….

But besides that, I don’t even remember if that RP was finished, mainly because I think I started to stop going there as much and lost interest. The RP itself, actually, I think started to slow down, mainly because people got busy with other things, especially Susan and because she was again, more or less the driving force behind most things, it petered out.

I’m actually uncertain how old I was when there, because I will admit, when I was in my first year of college, I toyed around with some of the concepts from this RP and wanted to repurpose it into a story. It was mainly the stuff that took place in the future with the Royal Family and with the Four Horsemen, where basically, it would follow Older Valarie (hell, the “rewrites” character name might have just been Valarie for simplicity sake) as she dealt with her feelings with the Royal family and her relation to it, trying to protect the Kingdom and its people, and eventually deal with the disappearance of her Second in Command and his reappearance as a giant threat later on.

…. Really, I still kinda like the idea…

ANYWAY, I have talked long enough and am tardy enough with just this post as it is, so I’ll leave it at that. According to the Google Doc where I’m writing all this before actually posting, this is six pages long, so even more apologies for my rambling.

Still, hope you liked this month’s look back in time and look forward to the next one!

High as a kite

REALITY: “WHAT ON EARTH WERE YOU THINKING!” I could hear her yell through my closed bedroom door. “YOU ARE THE OLDEST, YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE EXAMPLE!” I could faintly make out as she slammed the washer door shut. I was in my room, fumbling around with my ear buds trying to untangle them, which always feels to me like I am a magician pulling off some spectacular stunt. My mother was still yelling at me through the closed door, but I couldn’t hear anything she was saying now, as I had successfully untangled my ear buds and was currently drowning her out with the rhythms and beats of one of my favorite alternative rock tracks. Listening to music is my only real escape at this point. I mean I can’t really go anywhere or do anything. I just got home from the hospital. I broke my arm and my leg. Should have been much worse though, it sounded much worse when it happened. As I lay in my bed listening to my music, I started drifting off in thought. I suppose she is right I said to myself inside my head. I mean I am the oldest child and I do know my brother looks up to me. But its that whole jump off a bridge thing. I mean, mom raised us to think and act for ourselves. Just because I do something stupid doesn’t mean he has to, Heck, my little brother is a smart kid. He probably wouldn’t even do anything I do at all. But I see where I could have made a smarter decision, but I was backed into a corner. I was under a lot of pressure. I mean you would have done the same thing if you were faced with the same situation. I mean come on my social reputation was at stake.

FLASHBACK: This morning after I got ready for school and ate my breakfast, my brother and I set out to the bus stop to wait for the bus to pick us up to go to school. While on the way to the bus stop we ran into our neighbor and my best friend Danny Dalinbar. We greeted each other with our secret handshake and spent most of the walk talking about how instead of going to bed like we each told our parents, we were up playing zombie horde 4 on our gaming console. It was a typically cold morning for our part of the country and we could see our breath as we continued our walk to the bus stop. The whole time pretending we were some cool, suave dudes smoking a cigarette with our buddies. We finally made it to the bus stop, and while Dal and I were in the middle of a conversation my little brother interrupts us and is pointing up at something in the sky. “LOOK!” he shouts, “up in that tree in Mr. Ratsan’s yard” “Do you see it?” he questions. “Well do you see it?” I look up at the tree and I notice something tangled in one of the branches and moving violently in the breeze. “It’s a kite” Dal Says. “I’m going to climb up there and get it” I hear Dal say. “Not if I beat you to it” I say back to him. “Pssssh,” Dal says, “you can’t beat me to that kite, you are too scared to climb that tree” he says in reply.  “I am not!” I holler back at him. “You are nothing but a big chicken” Dal continues, “Remember that one time at my house, you came over to play catch with my new foam football and you threw it to hard and it got stuck on the roof” he said. “You were too scared to go on the roof to get the football, so we couldn’t play anymore.” “Yeah I remember” I say with an attitude. “But I was like 10 at the time, I’m 14 now and I’m not scared to climb up high anymore” I say back at him. “yeah right, I’ll believe it when I see it, you big chicken” Dal says. Dal then proceeds to mimic the movements and noises of a chicken, “bwaak, bwaak, bwaaaak!” he says to me at the same time he is moving his arms up and down as if he is flapping his wings. “Cut it out, Dal!” I say forcefully. “im not a chicken and I can climb that tree and get that kite” I say with confidence. “Oh yeah, well than prove it chicken wuss” Dal replies.

REALITY: This is where my mom thinks I should have been a good example to my little brother. But I mean what could I do?  Dal had me cornered. I couldn’t risk my social reputation and friendship with him. If I didn’t climb that tree he would tell it to all our other friends when we got to school and who would want to be friends with a chicken wuss?

FLASHBACK: “Dal” I say with my chest puffed out, “Im going to climb that tree and I am going to get that kite and I am going to make you eat your words” I say with arrogance. And just like that I walk across the street and into Mr. Ratsan’s yard. As I stand face to face with the behemoth in front of me I glance up ward toward the top of the tree. I can’t really see a whole lot on account of the sun shining through the gaps in the branches momentarily blinding me. One thing I could tell for sure is this was a tall tree. As I stand looking up at the tree, I seriously start to doubt that I can make this climb. “This doesn’t seem like a good idea” I say to myself. I don’t think I can make it up that high, and if I do how in the heck am I going to get down? All these thoughts are racing through my brain. Then just like clockwork, like he knew what I was thinking, I can hear Dal on the other side of the street taunting me. “You won’t do it, you big Chicken” I hear him tease. “Bwaaak, Bwakkk, Baaaakkkk!!!” he continues.  That was just the motivation I needed to snap me out of these thoughts of self-doubt. I search for a good first footing and I find a knot in the tree that looks to be the beginning of my trek up this tree. I place my left foot on the knot and put all my weight on it as I hoist myself up and give the tree a friendly hug, like you would a friend you haven’t seen in years. From this position I look for my next move. I see a branch just within reach. With my left foot stretched out on my tippy-toes I reach for the branch just above my head. I am able to wrap both of my hands around it, and at the same time sort of walk myself up the tree until I reach the branch. At which point I hoist one leg over the branch and then straddle it as if I am riding a pony. Once I feel safe and settled in, I break the first rule of climbing, I look down. I feel a rush of fear push from my stomach up to my brain and as if it were one motion I feel myself lay back at the same time.

REALITY: I physically felt it. I know because I almost feel of the branch. It like physically moved me. It was one of the scariest moments in my life. I thought for sure I was going to fall of and die. Luckily, I didn’t.

FLASHBACK:  I quickly pull myself against the mysterious force and slam my chest down on the branch and hug that limb as tight as I can. I hear my little brother from the other side of the road yelling something. It takes me a few seconds to regain my composure, but once I do I am able to make out what my brother is saying.  “Quade, be careful up there” he yells. “No Duh!” I want to yell back but I am still a little leery, so I don’t do anything but continue to hug that branch. After a few minutes of hugging that branch, I finally regain my confidence to continue my journey up this tree to get that kite. I slowly but steadily, climb up the next few branches, until I arrive at the final branch. The branch that contains the kite. I fight back the urge to look down, that got me into lots of trouble last time. I instead focus my gaze on that kite.  I know I am close to the kite because I can feel the cold breeze vehemently rake across my face. The same breeze is also causing this kite to do all kinds of tricks. Flips and spins as it whips sadistically in the wind. This is going to make it that much harder to grab I think to myself. I continue to internally dialogue with myself, trying to talk myself into taking those last few steps towards the kite. “Just a few more steps”, I say to myself “and this is all over”. I run through the game plan in my head take slow careful steps, grab the kite, then return to this position here, and begin my decent down to precious ground. I continue to go through the steps at least 5 more times. I am still hesitant to take that first step. All of a sudden, the wind picks up and a forceful gust moves the limb just enough for me to lose my footing which as a consequence drives me to adjust to save myself from falling. Another scary moment, I think to myself. I’m getting tired of all these close calls. I can feel the wind start to pick back up again, I pull myself in tight to the closest limb and brace myself for the fight. To my surprise, instead of fighting to not fall, I find that I am being smacked in the face repeatedly by the kite. I have to carefully think on how I can loosen my grip with one hand and grab the kite, while at the same time holding on to the tree to prevent from falling. Once I figured that out, I reach for the kite, and right as I feel the cold plastic material between my fingers, I hear a deep booming voice, “Quade Alexander, get down from off my tree right this instant” It was Mr. Ratsan. That wasn’t the worst part. The worst part is that he startled me just enough for me to lose my concentration. Which as a result made me lose my footing, which chained the next few sequences of events that led to me falling about 18 feet in the air until the ground decided to be helpful and catch me.

REALITY: I won’t go into the gross and gory details of how bad my leg sounded when it connected with the ground. I’ll just say it was loud. I won’t mention the weird and unnatural angle my foot was turned either.  I won’t mention how you could see the bone sticking out of my arm. I will of course leave out that I may have cried and blacked out. What I can tell you is I don’t really remember to much about the fall or what happened after. All I really remember is waking up in the hospital and not really being able to move. I soon realized my movement had been restricted by casts and drugs. I don’t really remember much of my stay at the hospital, but I do know I won’t really be doing much of anything for the next 6-8 weeks, maybe longer. You know come to think of it, that was a really dumb idea, good thing none of that ever really happened.

Blast to the Past

Natural portals were both a good and bad thing in Danny’s book. The were bad because the would pop up out of nowhere and take him to places he never asked to be, but the were also good because sometimes that was exactly what the needed.

However, he had no idea how to feel about this one.

The sky was grey and lifeless, and there went any buildings. Just trees and a dirt path leading to a giant wave of smoke in the distance.

Danny didn’t know if it was because of years of fighting ghosts and super villains, but his gut was screaming at him yo check it out. He turned invisible and flew towards what he probably shouldn’t.

It only took him a few short minutes but in those short minutes the threat had been neutralized.

By Captain America.

Danny flew down and his behind a tank despite being invisible, and watched as Cap and some other guys, came together again.

“Wait,” Cap said. “Where’s Buck?”

“Right here you fuckin’ punk,” he hollered. Danny’s eyes bulged out of his skull at the sight if Bucky Barnes.

He was wearing and odd, blue uniform with a rifle strapped to his back. His hair was short and the had a cocky, easy going grin plastered onto his face. And both of his arms were flesh.

“I’m in World War II,” Danny muttered to himself. Slightly in shock, slightly in relief. Because Cap knew Tony’s dad meaning he could build a portal and get back home!

“What was that?” The guy in the bowler hat asked. If Danny was right, that guy was Dug Dug Dugan. A member of the Howling Commandos like Steve and Bucky.

It took all of Danny’s willpower to not fanboy and make a fool of himself. He had almost all of the Howling Commandos comic books. He stopped collecting when Steve started telling stories.

It was the that Danny realized that if the wanted their help he would have to reveal himself. But the wasn’t going to turn into Fenton. Just stay as Phantom.

He slowly came out of his hiding spot, dropping his invisibility and holding his hands up in the universal sign of Please Don’t Hurt Me.

“It was me,” Danny said, taking a step forward. “And I need you help.”

“And how do we know you’re not HYDRA?” Bucky asked, aiming his rifle at what Danny knew was his beautiful face.

“Because I hate them. They experimented on me like I was a class science project.” Granted it wasn’t in this time but that didn’t stop Danny from feeling the level of hate that he did towards the organization. He saw Bucky relax just ever so slightly. He understood.

“Why should we believe you?” Dugan asked. The other Commandos yelled out their agreements.

“Because,” Danny said, unzipping his HAZMAT suit and ripping it open, “Do you honestly think I would be on the same side as the people who did this?”

It was a low blow, Danny knew, but if he showed his dissection scar then maybe the would help him.

Cap and Bucky went pale, and the others couldn’t bare to look for morethan a couple if seconds. Dugan started to look a little green, and Danny zipped his suit back up.

“Can you guys help me?” Danny asked. They had recovered enough to give him a powerful yes, the would help him, but still made extra eye contact.

Steve honestly didn’t know what to think of this kid. First, the was a fucking child. Second, what the hell was he wearing? And what did that insignia on his chest mean?

He was… Unnatural. He was maybe sixteen or seventeen at the most but he had white hair that was brighter than the old man’s who lived in the apartment above him back in Brooklyn. And his eyes…Those were what set Steve off the most. He had seen bright green eyes, but his were freaking glowing. Literally. In fact, no that Steve looked closer, he saw that all of him had a faint, white flow around him. But there was something about him that made Steve want to trust him. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew he had to follow his gut. It hadn’t led him wrong so far.

"Whats your name, kid?” He asked, placing his shield on his back. The kid gave him a relieved, somewhat cocky smile as he flipped his hair out of his eyes.

“Name’s Phantom.”

———-

It was two days to get to their extraction, so the had to camp. The first night went smoothly, more smooth than the all thought it would. Like always, they took turns sleeping. Dugan took the first shift, Bucky the second, and Steve the third.

Danny had stayed awake for all three.

He had cracked a couple of jokes to Dugan, but when he got no response the say in silence until he woke Bucky up and went to bed himself. Despite knowing Bucky, he didn’t know this one. He had no idea how to talk to him, so they didn’t.

Steve, Danny had quickly realized, hadn’t really changed all that much. It was easier to talk to him. Back at the Tower he had always thought of him like a mentor, but now he was just a good friend. A sight for sore eyes.

“So…Is Phantom like, a code-name or something?” Steve asked. Danny nodded.

“Yeah,” he replied with a small smile. That surprised Steve. He didn’t really see many smiles from anybody. Nit a genuine one, anyway.

“Can I ask you something?” Steve asked. It was out of nowhere, but Danny was winking to answer them.

“Yeah, to ahead.”

“Why are you glowing? And how did a kid like you end up in the middle of enemy territory?” Danny saw nothing but concern in Steve’s big blue eyes, and he allowed himself to sigh.

“I’m… Ugh, my name is Phantom for a reason. I… I’m half ghost. My parents were scientists and ther3 was an accident and it changed my DNA. And I ended up here through a natural portal.”

“Half ghost? Natural portal?”

“Yeah. Human and ghost. Id show you my human half but I don’t wanna wake the others. And natural portals are linked to this place called the Ghost Zone, which is where all ghosts stay. They can take you to any time, place, or dimension. You’re probably not going to believe me but in from the 21st Century…”

There was something else he wasn’t telling Steve. And he was right-Steve didn’t really believe it. But if he was it would make sense. Why he had on funny clothes, the glowing, his he appeared out of nowhere. But he needed to know the rest

“There’s something else, isn’t there?” He asked. Danny nodded.

“Yeah. But I cant tell you. I don’t wanna mess with time. Bad things happen when you mess with time. And Clockwork would have my head on a stick if he found out I screwed it up. He’s another ghost-Master of Time and all that.”

“You’re really open about all of this,” Steve noted. “Why?”

“I guess,” Danny said, “cause you’re easy to talk to. Like an old friend.”

They spent the rest of the night in silence.

----—–

The second night was kind if the same, except when he and Steve talked, all he did was tell him his real name. It was a small thing, Steve wanted to believe, but the also wanted to believe that it was about as big of a thing as Danny floating about an inch of of the ground instead of actually walking. He knew Bucky noticed his feet weren't actually touching the ground, but he didn't know if the others saw. They had gotten him some clothes so he could blend in a little better. Over his skin tight suit he wore some pants, boots, and a dirty, green long sleeved shirt. They put a helmet on him so he wouldn't be a glowing beacon of trouble, and got him some goggles for when the met Stark.

It was strange, though, how he could be so aware and awake. The kid hadn’t slept in two days, maybe more, and he was walking around like he’ slept for a week. Steve also noticed that he didn’t really seem winded. In fact, the only time he really saw Danny physically breathe was when he sighed. Other than that, it was kind of rare to see his chest move up in down like his did. He also didn’t eat as much as the others, for whatever reason. Maybe ghosts didn’t need to actually eat? He had no idea. But he did take some coffee if it was offered it to him. He never got cold, either In fact, he complained that it was to warm a couple of times.

Bucky sped up so he could talk to Steve, keeping an ear on Phantom’s conversation with Gabe. He was trying to learn a few basic French terms for Denier. He seemed to be a fast learner.

“So, did you talk to the kid?” Bucky whispered. Steve nodded and snuck a glance at Danny, who was laughing at something Gabe said. It was weird. He was like a ray of sunshine, all happiness and rainbows right in the middle of a war.

“Said he was half-ghost and from the 21st century,” Steve replied, eyeing the trees. “I’m not saying it’s true, but it would explain everything.”

“Seriously?” Bucky asked, giving Steve a skeptical look.

“Well, I went from ninety pounds soaking wet to 240 pounds and in enemy territory within a few minutes. I like to think that at this point I have an open mind. Besides, he’s not even touching the ground. You saw, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. I don’t like it, though. He shouldn’t be here. And I’ve read enough books to know that if you mess with time bad things happen.”

“Goodness, you’re so paranoid. And he said the same thing, about time and all of that. If we take him to Stark, though, he should be able to get home.”

“Good. I can’t stand any more of his stupid jokes.”

---------

“Woah, retro,” Danny said as they walked into Howard’s lab, Peggy leading them. Steve had briefed her on the way down while Bucky and Danny talked about the future. Apparently, in the 21st Century they did not have flying cars. But they had flying people, so it was kind of the same thing, according to Danny. And on top of that, they had a black president, same-sex marriage was legal, and and his best friend was a guy who could stick to walls and shoot webs like a spider. It was all very intriguing.

“Ah!” Howard shouted as they walked over to him. “Who do we have here?” He asked, looking Danny up and down. “You’re fashion sense is absolutely horrible, kid, let me tell you. Who dressed you, Cap?”

“Yeah. actually,” Danny replied nervously.

“What a shame. Any-who, I assume you all are here for upgrades?” Howard looked at them expectantly, his eyebrow raising up the same way Tony’s did. He was fidgety and tinkering with his hands when he didn’t have a tool in them. The apple really didn’t fall far.

“Um, actually, I need to get home. But I need your lab to do it.”

Howard stopped dead in his tracks, blinking at Danny as if he told him that he needed Howard’s lung.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you. You, an obviously inexperienced child, needs to use my tools to get home? And how do you plan on doing that?”

“I’m going to make blue prints and go from there. I’ve built it before, I just need a pen and some wall space.”

He got up in Howard’s space, but it wasn’t as intimidating as he had hoped because of his awful getup. 

“Danny, show him,” Steve said.

“Ugh, finally,” Danny said. He stepped back from Howard, the tension already gone, and started taking off the helmet and goggles, showing white hair and green eyes. He took off the long sleeved shirt and pants and boots as well, showing Peggy and Howard the uniform he wore underneath.

“What are you, kid?” Howard asked. Danny could practically see the gears turning in his head as he lifted off f the ground, sitting cross legged in mid air.

“I’m a ghost. Well, half-ghost, but a ghost nonetheless. And I need to use your lab so I can get home to my time. Please?”

---------

It took only a few weeks to build the portal from scratch, even with the modifications Danny had made to it. But Steve and Bucky were still sad to see the little genius go.

“Okay,” Danny said as he took the blueprints and incinerated them in his hands. “This works on ectoplasm-the stuff ghosts are made of-and it’ll only work once. But Steve, Bucky, you have to promise me you’ll destroy the portal after I leave. I can’t be ruining the time stream or anything, it’s highly important to the future. Understand?” Cap and Bucky nodded.

“Where’d you get the ectooplasm?” Bucky asked as Danny turned the portal on. It hummed with glowing energy.

Wordlessly, Danny held up his bandaged arm. “Nothing a little of myself can’t fix.” He walked over, and stood before them as the portal finished warming up. “I can’t thank you guys enough,” he told them, holding out his hand. Steve and Bucky both shook it, and he gave them a two-fingered saute before flying through, and into the Ghost Zone. Once the doors were closed, it started sparking and shutting down, deactivating thanks to Danny. Steve walked up and destroyed the control panel, and Bucky started to tear the wires out.

After all, they had to keep their promise.

---------

It only took a quick stop at Clockwork’s Tower and he was back at the Avenger’s Tower, safe and sound like nothing had ever happened.

“Oh, Daniel, back from patrol already?” Vision asked as he flew up to him. Danny nodded, and took the hallway that led to his room. He had had a long couple of weeks.

“Danny.”

He turned around, only to see Steve, still in his shorts from his morning run.

“Oh, hey Steve. What’s up?” All he had to do was act natural. It couldn’t have been that hard, right?

“Nothing,” Steve said with a smile, patting Danny’s shoulder. “I just wanted to say you’re welcome.”

Danny stared, stunned, as Steve casually headed to his room. When his brain finally rebooted, he smiled.

It was nice to finally know the reason Steve had been so keen on having him join the Avengers.

Tactical Guide to Paul Felder vs. Al Iaquinta

UFC 223 is the best card the Ultimate Fighting Championship has put together in a long time. Part of that has to do with the fact that it isn’t completely reliant on the main event—which is probably a good idea as we are now on the fourth booking of Tony Ferguson vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov. One of the brilliant bouts on this card which is more than worth its portion of the asking price is the mouth-wateringly unpredictable matchup between next-great-lightweight, Paul Felder and the previous next-great-lightweight, Al Iaquinta.

Narratives make fights and sometimes they are hard to come by, but the contrasts between Iaquinta and Felder couldn’t be any more obvious and out front. Ragin’ Al routinely lives up to his moniker by proving hot-headed in the cage, on the mic, after the fights, and most importantly in his negotiations with the UFC. Iaquinta’s public spats with his employer have eaten up the majority of the last few years. He was recently named interim secretary and treasurer of yet another attempt to unionize MMA fighters though given his temperament it is a title which you would hope is ceremonial. In the meantime his trips to the cage have been infrequent and most recently—in the case of knocking out a thoroughly washed up Diego Sanchez—largely pointless. In fact one of the problems of Iaquinta’s lengthy absence is that the big names on his record (Ross Pearson, Joe Lauzon) are no longer big names starting to wind down, but are now well into the twilight of their careers.

A wicked knockout against Diego Sanchez, but not a fight that needed to happen nor one that anyone was clamoring for.

Paul Felder is the perfect company man: a less shopworn version of his friend and the UFC’s golden boy, Donald Cerrone. Dana White’s claim that the best fighters in the world fight three times a year in the UFC has always been a shaky one, yet Paul Felder has competed three times a year like clockwork since his arrival in 2015. When the troublesome Francisco Trinaldo was putting together the best streak in the lightweight division, while also being forty years old, speaking no English and having zero marketability whatsoever, it was Felder who was tasked with getting rid of him. Now Felder works as a commentator for the UFC in between his regular in-ring appearances and does a very solid job.

Felder’s recent run of wins highlight what he does best. Often billed as a striker, Felder’s feet can be sluggish but where he really excels is as a hitter. If he can get his man standing still (or lying prone) he can unleash some ferocious elbows and kicks. In fact his last three victories have come by way of his elbows. Against Stevie Ray, a grueling clinch fight allowed Felder to score a knee and finish with elbows on the mat. Against Charles Oliveira, Felder spent the entire first round fighting off a D’arce attempt and a standing rear naked choke. The moment he got free he dove right back into Oliveira’s guard to push the pace on him. In the second round, Felder reversed a clinch and put Oliveira on the fence. Both on the mat and on the feet, Felder’s head was constantly being posted underneath his opponent’s, giving him superior striking position by driving the opponent upright or back into the fence.

When he jostled for head position with Oliveira, Felder felt the chance to have a swing and pulled back to crack Oliveira with a sinister elbow which saw the Brazilian sag to the mat. More elbows from guard soon finished proceedings.

On the outside, Felder’s boxing is pretty bare bones—working high lows with one-twos and pounding in the odd low kick. Felder’s fight with Daron Cruickshank demonstrated that he likes working in tit-for-tat exchanges and can get caught clean in longer exchanges when he thinks that it is his turn to move. Cruickshank had great success sneaking out the side door after a one-two and side kicking Felder in the body or even face when Felder turned to follow. The classic Wonderboy side kick set up.

Cruickshank also demonstrated Felder’s defensive shortcomings in longer exchanges: drag Felder past the one-two and he’s open for plenty of strikes in mid range. Cruickshank snuck in backhands after missed blows and broke Felder’s rhythm.

If you exclude falling victim to an incredible wall walking D’arce choke from the bottom by Mitch Clarke, Al Iaquinta’s most troublesome fight in recent years was against Jorge Masvidal. It was a typical Masvidal fight in that Masvidal looked hard to hit, made Iaquinta miss a lot, and then failed to push his advantage, losing on the scorecards. The truth of Iaquinta’s striking is that he’s right hand happy and when Masvidal controlled distance and swayed away each time Iaquinta stepped in, the right hand just couldn’t find the mark and Iaquinta had little else to make Masvidal worry. Though his jab looked much sharper in the Lauzon fight, Iaquinta would still fixate on the right, throwing five or six strikes in combination and only landing the right hand. As Jim Miller found, Joe Lauzon will often get his head down and cover rather than leave striking range when under fire. This meant that Iaquinta could work in longer and longer flurries against him until the right hand finally snuck through and landed flush.

Hypothetical Gameplans

It would be good to see Paul Felder lean on his heavy kicks and knees more in this bout. Iaquinta is pretty hittable in exchanges, but his footwork is generally light and economical. Iaquinta’s stance is considerably more bladed than Felder’s and presents his lead leg as a lovely target. Jorge Masvidal had decent success pursuing it in their fight. Another Iaquinta habit is that his elbows tend to float away from his body. Masvidal slotted in both switch kicks and stepping kicks on the open side and later used the same kick to set up an effective flurry with his hands.

Felder’s first fight in the UFC was marked by brilliant use of a switch left knee to intercept the charges of Danny Castillo. With Iaquinta constantly looking to step in for the overhand, Felder might do well to hang back on the outside and allow Iaquinta to come to him, intercepting him with knees and kicks to the midsection when possible.

It would be good to see Felder try to cut the cage and put Iaquinta against the fence. Iaquinta is a good wrestler but he hasn’t looked anything close to unstoppable on his shots in MMA. He is more likely to do crafty things like pick up a single leg and drop it to throw his right hand, or attempt a kani-basami scissor leg takedown as he did against Jorge Masvidal and Kevin Lee.

For Al Iaquinta, using the space of the cage would seem to be a good idea. His arsenal is less varied on the feet but his movement is much more spry and savvy than Felder’s. Given Felder’s tendency to plod after his opponents, drawing Felder forward and around the cage could work a treat. It would be nice to see Iaquinta take advantage of Felder’s tit-for-tat rhythm by feinting or even throwing out a couple of half-assed punches, stepping out the side door or pulling back, and returning as Felder pursues. Cruickshank did it repeatedly with the dart and side kick, but the Petrosyan/Pep skip could work a treat for the more minimalist offense of Iaquinta.

The double jab and the feint to double jab could work wonderfully for Iaquinta here and generally Ray Longo calls for a lot of feints from his fighters. Alessandro Ricci fell into a predictable rhythm in his fight with Felder and ate a gorgeous counter elbow. But this elbow, and Felder’s favorite counter knees, both require Felder to get his man’s timing. He also drops his hands when he attempts his knees; a feint and a double jab into right hand could catch Felder on the end of Iaquinta’s right hand and on one leg—that could be disastrous.

Drawing Felder’s low kicks would be another way to get him out of position and plow in with that double jab to right hand. Tiffany van Soest is a great example of this in the kickboxing ring, she will bounce around outside of range, very deliberately step in to present her lead leg, and almost immediately retract it. If the opponent doesn’t kick, nothing is lost. If the opponent does kick she is ready to step back in as their leg swings by.

Iaquinta showed some awareness of this against Masvidal, letting Masvidal fall short on a couple of low kicks after feinting, but failed to capitalize on it with anything meaningful. And of course the old fashioned method of brute-forcing it will always be a reasonable response to a good low kick. Fedor Emelianenko and Igor Vovchanchyn scored a dozen knockdowns between them by stepping into the kick, pointing the knee out and allowing the foot to ride up the front of their quad. At the same time, they were throwing the right hand.

A tactic that might come in handy for Iaquinta is to lead with kicks and step in off them. Both Iaquinta and his teammate Chris Weidman have done this well before—they aren’t big kickers or known for their kicking games but they kick decently enough and can travel in quickly off them, not caring so much about religiously retreating to their guard. Alessandro Ricci had great success putting up kicks and then darting in to hit Felder with his hands after Felder had braced for the impact. Here Ricci both returns to stance and immediately bounds in, and hits that Machida special—using the kick itself to step in.

The reason this fight sticks out as such an enchanting prospect even amid the star-studded UFC 223 is that Al Iaquinta is an unknown. He got off to a promising start, beating Kevin Lee who is now a top ten lightweight, but after that it was as though the UFC wanted to push Iaquinta—giving him some old timers with name value to knock out—and he still bit the hand that fed him. So we don’t know what Iaquinta can do against top names, while Paul Felder seems to have found himself, competing against dangerous names in eight fights since the last time Iaquinta stepped in the cage with a real opponent. If Iaquinta can pull off the win he is right back in the top of the division. If Felder can stop Iaquinta, any leverage Ragin’ Al had during his continuous contract disagreements is suddenly undone.

Jack wrote the hit biography Notorious: The Life and Fights of Conor McGregor and podcasts at The Fight Primer.

Tactical Guide to Paul Felder vs. Al Iaquinta syndicated from https://australiahoverboards.wordpress.com

Tactical Guide to Paul Felder vs. Al Iaquinta

UFC 223 is the best card the Ultimate Fighting Championship has put together in a long time. Part of that has to do with the fact that it isn’t completely reliant on the main event—which is probably a good idea as we are now on the fourth booking of Tony Ferguson vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov. One of the brilliant bouts on this card which is more than worth its portion of the asking price is the mouth-wateringly unpredictable matchup between next-great-lightweight, Paul Felder and the previous next-great-lightweight, Al Iaquinta.

Narratives make fights and sometimes they are hard to come by, but the contrasts between Iaquinta and Felder couldn’t be any more obvious and out front. Ragin’ Al routinely lives up to his moniker by proving hot-headed in the cage, on the mic, after the fights, and most importantly in his negotiations with the UFC. Iaquinta’s public spats with his employer have eaten up the majority of the last few years. He was recently named interim secretary and treasurer of yet another attempt to unionize MMA fighters though given his temperament it is a title which you would hope is ceremonial. In the meantime his trips to the cage have been infrequent and most recently—in the case of knocking out a thoroughly washed up Diego Sanchez—largely pointless. In fact one of the problems of Iaquinta’s lengthy absence is that the big names on his record (Ross Pearson, Joe Lauzon) are no longer big names starting to wind down, but are now well into the twilight of their careers.

A wicked knockout against Diego Sanchez, but not a fight that needed to happen nor one that anyone was clamoring for.

Paul Felder is the perfect company man: a less shopworn version of his friend and the UFC’s golden boy, Donald Cerrone. Dana White’s claim that the best fighters in the world fight three times a year in the UFC has always been a shaky one, yet Paul Felder has competed three times a year like clockwork since his arrival in 2015. When the troublesome Francisco Trinaldo was putting together the best streak in the lightweight division, while also being forty years old, speaking no English and having zero marketability whatsoever, it was Felder who was tasked with getting rid of him. Now Felder works as a commentator for the UFC in between his regular in-ring appearances and does a very solid job.

Felder’s recent run of wins highlight what he does best. Often billed as a striker, Felder’s feet can be sluggish but where he really excels is as a hitter. If he can get his man standing still (or lying prone) he can unleash some ferocious elbows and kicks. In fact his last three victories have come by way of his elbows. Against Stevie Ray, a grueling clinch fight allowed Felder to score a knee and finish with elbows on the mat. Against Charles Oliveira, Felder spent the entire first round fighting off a D’arce attempt and a standing rear naked choke. The moment he got free he dove right back into Oliveira’s guard to push the pace on him. In the second round, Felder reversed a clinch and put Oliveira on the fence. Both on the mat and on the feet, Felder’s head was constantly being posted underneath his opponent’s, giving him superior striking position by driving the opponent upright or back into the fence.

When he jostled for head position with Oliveira, Felder felt the chance to have a swing and pulled back to crack Oliveira with a sinister elbow which saw the Brazilian sag to the mat. More elbows from guard soon finished proceedings.

On the outside, Felder’s boxing is pretty bare bones—working high lows with one-twos and pounding in the odd low kick. Felder’s fight with Daron Cruickshank demonstrated that he likes working in tit-for-tat exchanges and can get caught clean in longer exchanges when he thinks that it is his turn to move. Cruickshank had great success sneaking out the side door after a one-two and side kicking Felder in the body or even face when Felder turned to follow. The classic Wonderboy side kick set up.

Cruickshank also demonstrated Felder’s defensive shortcomings in longer exchanges: drag Felder past the one-two and he’s open for plenty of strikes in mid range. Cruickshank snuck in backhands after missed blows and broke Felder’s rhythm.

If you exclude falling victim to an incredible wall walking D’arce choke from the bottom by Mitch Clarke, Al Iaquinta’s most troublesome fight in recent years was against Jorge Masvidal. It was a typical Masvidal fight in that Masvidal looked hard to hit, made Iaquinta miss a lot, and then failed to push his advantage, losing on the scorecards. The truth of Iaquinta’s striking is that he’s right hand happy and when Masvidal controlled distance and swayed away each time Iaquinta stepped in, the right hand just couldn’t find the mark and Iaquinta had little else to make Masvidal worry. Though his jab looked much sharper in the Lauzon fight, Iaquinta would still fixate on the right, throwing five or six strikes in combination and only landing the right hand. As Jim Miller found, Joe Lauzon will often get his head down and cover rather than leave striking range when under fire. This meant that Iaquinta could work in longer and longer flurries against him until the right hand finally snuck through and landed flush.

Hypothetical Gameplans

It would be good to see Paul Felder lean on his heavy kicks and knees more in this bout. Iaquinta is pretty hittable in exchanges, but his footwork is generally light and economical. Iaquinta’s stance is considerably more bladed than Felder’s and presents his lead leg as a lovely target. Jorge Masvidal had decent success pursuing it in their fight. Another Iaquinta habit is that his elbows tend to float away from his body. Masvidal slotted in both switch kicks and stepping kicks on the open side and later used the same kick to set up an effective flurry with his hands.

Felder’s first fight in the UFC was marked by brilliant use of a switch left knee to intercept the charges of Danny Castillo. With Iaquinta constantly looking to step in for the overhand, Felder might do well to hang back on the outside and allow Iaquinta to come to him, intercepting him with knees and kicks to the midsection when possible.

It would be good to see Felder try to cut the cage and put Iaquinta against the fence. Iaquinta is a good wrestler but he hasn’t looked anything close to unstoppable on his shots in MMA. He is more likely to do crafty things like pick up a single leg and drop it to throw his right hand, or attempt a kani-basami scissor leg takedown as he did against Jorge Masvidal and Kevin Lee.

For Al Iaquinta, using the space of the cage would seem to be a good idea. His arsenal is less varied on the feet but his movement is much more spry and savvy than Felder’s. Given Felder’s tendency to plod after his opponents, drawing Felder forward and around the cage could work a treat. It would be nice to see Iaquinta take advantage of Felder’s tit-for-tat rhythm by feinting or even throwing out a couple of half-assed punches, stepping out the side door or pulling back, and returning as Felder pursues. Cruickshank did it repeatedly with the dart and side kick, but the Petrosyan/Pep skip could work a treat for the more minimalist offense of Iaquinta.

The double jab and the feint to double jab could work wonderfully for Iaquinta here and generally Ray Longo calls for a lot of feints from his fighters. Alessandro Ricci fell into a predictable rhythm in his fight with Felder and ate a gorgeous counter elbow. But this elbow, and Felder’s favorite counter knees, both require Felder to get his man’s timing. He also drops his hands when he attempts his knees; a feint and a double jab into right hand could catch Felder on the end of Iaquinta’s right hand and on one leg—that could be disastrous.

Drawing Felder’s low kicks would be another way to get him out of position and plow in with that double jab to right hand. Tiffany van Soest is a great example of this in the kickboxing ring, she will bounce around outside of range, very deliberately step in to present her lead leg, and almost immediately retract it. If the opponent doesn’t kick, nothing is lost. If the opponent does kick she is ready to step back in as their leg swings by.

Iaquinta showed some awareness of this against Masvidal, letting Masvidal fall short on a couple of low kicks after feinting, but failed to capitalize on it with anything meaningful. And of course the old fashioned method of brute-forcing it will always be a reasonable response to a good low kick. Fedor Emelianenko and Igor Vovchanchyn scored a dozen knockdowns between them by stepping into the kick, pointing the knee out and allowing the foot to ride up the front of their quad. At the same time, they were throwing the right hand.

A tactic that might come in handy for Iaquinta is to lead with kicks and step in off them. Both Iaquinta and his teammate Chris Weidman have done this well before—they aren’t big kickers or known for their kicking games but they kick decently enough and can travel in quickly off them, not caring so much about religiously retreating to their guard. Alessandro Ricci had great success putting up kicks and then darting in to hit Felder with his hands after Felder had braced for the impact. Here Ricci both returns to stance and immediately bounds in, and hits that Machida special—using the kick itself to step in.

The reason this fight sticks out as such an enchanting prospect even amid the star-studded UFC 223 is that Al Iaquinta is an unknown. He got off to a promising start, beating Kevin Lee who is now a top ten lightweight, but after that it was as though the UFC wanted to push Iaquinta—giving him some old timers with name value to knock out—and he still bit the hand that fed him. So we don’t know what Iaquinta can do against top names, while Paul Felder seems to have found himself, competing against dangerous names in eight fights since the last time Iaquinta stepped in the cage with a real opponent. If Iaquinta can pull off the win he is right back in the top of the division. If Felder can stop Iaquinta, any leverage Ragin’ Al had during his continuous contract disagreements is suddenly undone.

Jack wrote the hit biography Notorious: The Life and Fights of Conor McGregor and podcasts at The Fight Primer.

Tactical Guide to Paul Felder vs. Al Iaquinta published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/